This story is part of the Wanderer series.
Darkness shrouded the plains, the last glimpses of dusk having long disappeared behind the distant, jagged mountains. The steppes howled as a tempered storm of gusts slowly lumbered across the dusty terra, despite there being not a single cloud in the starry sky. It brought a brief sense of respite to the besieged Adders, as they knew the encroaching imperial army dared not to wander out of their camps during these gusts, as mild as they were. Awaked denizens walked the streets without haste. Guardsmen on night watch stood by idly at their posts, gazing without urgency. The remaining women and children rested soundly in their shelters deep within the city.
Yet, unbeknownst to them, they were being watched by a predator. A hunter. Eyes sharp and omnipresent. Eyes filled with prejudice. Filled with envy. Filled with resentment.
She was crouched on the inner wall of the city, peering over the ledge. The towering walls made her small. The night made her dark. Nearly imperceptible to any wandering eyes from below. Easily missed by any complacent tower guard. The dry wind blew against her face, blowing her hair like a standard as she stared down upon the city, eyes glimmering with the soft glow of torchlight as she judged its people. They rested so peacefully. So harmlessly. They were people who cared. People who loved. People who desired to see another breaking day.
They were people who could easily be taken as citizens of the empire. They were no different than the families of the soldiers who filled the ranks of the imperial army.
Then, why…
“The Great… General… Xin Asahi…”
The messenger’s voice returned to her.
“… was slain…”
Her eyes narrowed. Her fist clenched against the cobble ground.
“… near his departure point…”
The words echoed.
“… his departure point from the empire’s southern border.”
Chin dipping, she shook her head.
“… the empire’s southern border.”
She hunched down onto her elbows, eyes squeezing shut.
“… southern border.”
Her shoulders trembled.
“… his departure point…”
Her head pounded.
“… Great General… Asahi…”
She pounded the cobble floor.
“… was slain…”
Her silhouette grew brighter.
“… slain…”
And brighter.
“… slain…”
And brighter.
“… slain…”
Thrusting her head up, she hurled a scream of anguish. Her voice pierced the night, bouncing off the myriad of stone faces and joining the howling wind as it resound through the open lands.
She heard voices nearby. Her cry alerted the wall guards to her presence. Slumping back down, she glared to the right as two men emerged from the tower’s archway, squinting in the torchlight as they warily pointed their spears forward, still uncertain what the glowing lump was.
Her glowing eyes widened, the swirling arms rotating counterclockwise once. The guards arrested in place, the whites of their eyes growing large as they gasped for air. Miyako did not wait for them to collapse, however, her right hand glowing brighter as she raised it up to her left cheek. With a swift swing of her arm, she threw out a scythe of energy, which cleaved through the tower and its two men equally clean. The scythe flew past the tower, deflecting up towards the sky and hitting the next one high up, shattering there with a bright explosion.
Meanwhile, the tower she cleaved, cut at an angle, began to slide off the wall, into the city’s perimeter, rumbling the rest of the structure as the sliced bricks grinded against each other. The two guards’ severed bodies collapsed, becoming lost in the dust kicking up.
Miyako then turned her attention to the left. Raising her right hand again, stretching her arm far out to the side towards the falling tower, it glowed brilliantly as she stared at the empty archway of the left side tower. Then, with a twist of her hip, she whipped her arm under her pocket for a sidearm throw, flinging a condensed ball of energy towards the archway. It arrived just as a pair of guards emerged up from the stairs, their torch-lit silhouettes becoming washed out as the ball of energy burst. The explosion swallowed the entire base of the tower, causing the remaining top to crash down and crush the debris underneath. Behind her, the earth shook as the sliced tower finally hit the ground, crushing the buildings below and fracturing the remaining structure, throwing bricked fragments into the air.
Having eliminated the immediate threats, her gaze whipped towards the city, darting across the torch-lit shelters, bunkers, encampments, barracks… She could see everything. Everyone. Their joy. Their alarm. Their misery. Their slumber. None could escape her all-encompassing gaze. In her fury, ignited by the invasion of her solitude, the people she gazed upon lost their humanity. Empathy withered away to dust, like a lotus in the desert. They became objects, vehicles of her despair, voices relentlessly pounding her brain as she tried to shut them out.
Eventually, her eyes fixated at a dark, indiscriminate point of the city where none of the voices rang. Shutting everything out, eyes widening once more, the black arms in her eyes gradually began to rotate again. Slowly, at first, making one, two, three revolutions, spinning faster and faster. Her silhouette grew brighter as she rapidly resonated her energy, pouring out her power and agony into her aura.
At the point of which she focused, a flickering ball of light was emerging. So rapid was this concentration that visible strings of magenta energy emerged from thin air to fall towards the growing core. Her saturated aura nourished the ball of light, quickly growing in size even as it condensed on its own weight. Its light grew bright enough for nearby citizens to notice, some gazing at it with drowsy intrigue while others became quite frightened, shouting down the street. Miyako paid them no heed, and continued to resonate, her patterned eyes steadying its revolutions.
Some guards arrived at the scene, shooing the gawking citizens as they surrounded the ball of light from one end of the corridor, pointing their spears at the light as if it were an emerging enemy. They poised there, waiting for its response, only to grow more uncertain and anxious as the air around them grew heavier, the ball beginning to crackle with unstable power.
Miyako herself began to tremble, shoulders winging and elbows buckling as she tried to maintain control over the pool of energy. Chin dipping, teeth grinding, she grunted as she strained to keep her eyes open. Her breaths were cutting short, every muscle clenching. Her resonance was growing weaker, unable to sustain her frenetic outpour.
A sharp pain erupted from the side of her torso, spreading from her abdomen up to her chest. Feeling her grasp break, she shut her eyes tight and gasped.
In that same instant, a flash of light washed over her body. A second later, the shockwave hammered her, a thunderous clap that upended her world and knocked her back. Dropping down and clenching her fingers against the rough cobble pathway, Miyako managed to stop herself from flying off the wall, pressing herself against the floor.
When the shock passed, she hastily glanced up, catching the last glimpses of what she created. A towering dome of light that was already dimming and dispersing into the night. Down below, in its wake, was a large crater, eerily dark as her energy left no unburnt residue. Only clouds of dust, dully illuminated by the city’s light, rose from the rubble. A chorus of loud, metallic-like impacts echoed as buildings collapsed and flung up debris rained down the entire city, even as far out as where she crouched. Small fragments of brick sporadically peppered the cobble around her. Screams rang out throughout the city. Its citizens were certainly aware of the present danger now.
She watched and listened to the havoc she wrought for several moments, catching her breath. Her eyes were dark again, no longer glowing. However, after muscling up and taking a deep breath, she got them to glow again, the three black arms reemerging. Crawling forwards to the ledge, she gauged the size of the crater and chose a different spot. Eyes widening once more, without brushing aside the long strands of hair in her face, she concentrated again.
Another flickering ball of light kindled to life, drawing energy from her aura. It grew slower this time, mirroring Miyako’s present exhaustion, yet it still mightily blossomed, growing dense and heavy. Only a single pair of citizens found the hidden jewel this time, a mother and her child, who promptly turned around and ran in a different direction.
The princess did not spend too long nurturing the orb this time. Feeling her grip begin to strain, she let go, blinking as she slightly dipped her head. No longer restrained, the node of energy swelled in a blink of an eye, engulfing buildings whole. For a brief instant, it flared like a midnight sun, flashing sinister magenta light across the landscape like a lightning strike. Out of the flash emerged another brilliant dome, naked and bare for a second before it became shrouded by clouds, the air vaporizing from the heat.
The cloud wall swept across the city at a frightening rate, smashing once again into Miyako’s perch with a thunderous clap. She was ready this time, bracing through the violent winds with squinted eyes, her hair wildly flying off her shoulders. The impact was much more tame this time, given the limited time she allowed it to grow. Despite the fact, the blast was still catastrophic, completely leveling down another wide radius of the city.
After the blast passed, Miyako wasted no time. She did not observe her destructive results. Quickly, she chose another intact section of the city, and began the cycle once again.
The princess did this again, and again. Three, four, five, six times. Seven, eight, nine… She mercilessly blasted the densely packed city-state, eviscerating the adder all along its scaled body, sparing nothing except for the small section of the city right below her nose. Some of her barrages spanned dangerously close to her position, leading her to pause in between to root herself to the walkway. But she cared not for her safety, her grief and agony pushing her to continue, each strike becoming less impactful as they overlapped with sections she previously destroyed. Fires began to light up in the city as torches scattered, only to be engulfed by the next explosion. As her attack carried on, the blasts became weaker and weaker as she recklessly expended all the energy her body could muster.
Finally, after countless remorseless assaults, she stopped, collapsing onto her elbows. Hunched over her shoulders, she laboriously panted, wet droplets dripping onto the cobble. Her wide eyes remained illuminated, blankly staring into the dark rock shadowed by her frayed hair, draped around her head like curtains.
Coming to grips with her fatigue, she eventually craned her head upwards, peering through long strands of hair at the destruction she wrought.
It was dark and cloudy. Glimpses of the remaining walls shone through the rising dust, illuminated by the moonless night. With large sections missing, and the land they surrounded flattened, they stuck out like shards, no longer looking like they belonged. The sight resembled a broken nest. A broken cradle. A shell of what it was before, unrecognizable from the image burned into her eyes moments before her first strike. The voices were gone. The faces were silent, frozen in place, for they were no longer there to sing any differently.
As the pounding subsided, a shade of rue began to color her atmosphere. The desecrated landscape offered her no reconciliation, no respite, no satisfaction. No triumphant roar rose in her chest. The crater in her heart remained, unable to heal.
She knew, no matter how much she struck the earth, no matter where she brought her destruction next, her guiding star would not return. Taken to another world, forever beyond her reach.