~Evil (And Cute) Run in the Family~ (Basic K'tesh)

[Hsin]

Governmental duties inevitably interfered with the pursuit of worldly and academic indulgences. The pursuit of arcana and martial excellence disappeared beneath an unending deluge of documents, meetings, and social functions. Not long after abandoning Aelyria Prime, the Kemite mystic began a concentrated effort to recapture his former physique. Nexus Prime, alas, lacked the familiar geographical features so beloved by the son of Demios. Dashing through the perfectly planned boulevards of Nexus Prime simply paled in comparison to running through the majestic forests covering the volcanic mountains of his home island. Moving furniture from one rented home to the next hardly provided enough labor to produce a sweat. The answer came neatly packaged in the School of the Silent Blade, the small community of Kemite K’tesh practitioners masquerading as an innocent mansion constructed in the ever-popular style of Zinn’sunn. It was not a particularly difficult building for Tsai to find. Especially with the hastily scrawled note delivered earlier that morning.

Hsin knelt atop a checkerboard blanket whist waiting for his darling sister. The normally extravagant Kemite wore simple white cotton pants and an equally spotless shirt tailored in the traditional style. His feet were bare, though his palms were encased in a pair of fingerless black leather gloves. A careful observer would notice a band of metal bolted into the fabric sporting four half-inch long black-steel claws. It was, evidently, not exactly his intention to indulge in unarmed combat. ”Good afternoon, Tsai,” murmured the mystic upon his sister’s approach. ”How do you fare?”

[Tsai Yuzhu Zhou]

Second cycle, fourth brightening of Immanis.

The young kemite girl sighed as she walked from street to street, the good thing about this place was it was well ordered but to a country girl it also was difficult. Use to navagateing by landmarks she found herself turning down the wrong streets constantly reorienting herself then moving on. She wore the old traveling cloths she had worn on her way down from Demios they were weather stained but still in vary good condition.

She had no idea what she was getting herself into when she finally arrived she walked up to the mansion and knocked, she was allowed in by unseen servants, she peered in and entered looking at the immensity of the place. She was amazed it was perhaps one of the biggest buildings she had been in for quite a long time. She cautiously walked further into its depths until she found herself in the room where her brother had been waiting on his checkerboard blanket. She smiled and bowed politely as he addressed her being rather formal then she normal would be around her brother.

He was to be her teacher and as such should be respected as such, he was not her brother, and this was going to be a long and tiering day. “good afternoon Hsin. I am well.” She waited for him to motion for her to sit before kneeling as well.

[Hsin]

“You will have to excuse me for not offering a hand,” replied the Kemite mystic. His voice, speaking in his natural Kemite tongue, sounded equal parts mirthful and mocking. Everything, from his serene face to his relaxed body, seemed so utterly normal it bordered upon banality. But Hsin Zhou practiced the Discipline of Mysticism and paid homage to Kaimelea-as-Risthal; his true thoughts disguised beneath layers of deception and illusion. Tsai remained chained to the tenants of Aslan, to the dictates of honor and order that damned Torek’s children to an ignoble end. Such was the price of their peaceful and loving childhood. Sooner or later, she would discover the world cared only for the illusion of honor and the enforcement of will. This revelation came often with a terrible price in flesh and tears. Innocence became little more than a commodity trampled for personal gain. Even as she seated herself in front of her brother, Hsin’s mind achieved a duality of existence in both the Material and the Astral. Tendrils of Psionic Essence plunged deep into his physical form to intermingle with the vehicle of ordered will to form mana. The Kemite mystic cared little for the crude machinations of his peers, preferring instead the subtle and the underhand. A single seed, born of Divination and conjured from the fabric of nightmares, slipped into Tsai’s fertile mind. Its slow, subliminal growth would produce a gentle curiosity at first, but slowly blossom into an addiction for the forbidden.

Affecting the course of a lifetime required far more than an eloquent argument or a single spell. It would take many cycles of tender care to produce the evening primrose; a constant tending to guide his sister on the narrow path between the dark and the light. Hsin performed his magic with both hesitation and elation, of joy and sorrow intermingled. Why did friendship so often seem like betrayal?

“Our father,” continued Hsin after a feigned moment of thought, “practiced a form of Ataa in his youth forbidding the infliction of intentional harm upon their opponent. K’tesh follows an entirely different path.” The young man pulled open a small briefcase on the blanket to their right. Inside was an assortment of tools: shuriken shaped like stars and needles, bladed gauntlets, wire garrotes, and vials with cryptic, faded labels. He waited for a sign of recognition to manifest on his sister’s face before continuing. ”You want to learn sorcery. They kill with light and force. K’tesh accomplishes the same end, merely with different methods. The motivation becomes tantamount then. Do you still want me to teach, Tsai? Curiosity isn’t enough now, nor self defense. Why do you want to learn?”

[Tsai Yuzhu Zhou]

She Knelt as Hisin started, their father had learned Ataa, she knew this but she listened to where this was going. K'tesh was a darker art something that was foreign to her. Something that spoke of dark deeds and killing in a dishonorable fashion. To come in the dark be seen by no one and then finally be snuff out the life of the target. She did not know where this passion suddenly arose. Sorcery with its force of light and k'tesh its source of darkness somehow started to mingle in her head and form something new. She did not catch it not yet her mind almost had another revaluation.

It slipped her mind for now but she seemed not just curious, but willing to take part in this dark art as the vials and needles lay before her, how could she use these things to peruse life? How could one snuff out a life and feel nothing at all. Then again life was a fragile thing something that could be taken by anyone or any manner of creature. There was something titillating about it the thought of being able to stand over you opponent who did not even know you had existed until just then. A shadow.

“I wish to fallow this dark path to where it will lead me, I left home searching for a path and one lays before me now, This path has something I must learn I feel.” She was spoke and it was true something sparked in her mind another brief vision of something not yet quite formed but not to far in her mind she left her old life she decided was just a prelude and left it behind.

[Hsin]

Tendrils of mana spun from Psionic Essence siphoned Tsai’s deepest thoughts into her eldest brother’s mind. To feel the path? Killing was the ultimate sin. No matter how wounded, no matter how broken, the faintest spark of existence still burnt within any survivor. Resurrection and redemption was merely a matter of Will and Purpose. His darling sister seemed intent upon drinking from the opposing philosophical poles of dark and light, never realizing the Material Plane existed in an endless gray twilight. Hsin Zhou rose gracefully to his feet before loosening the straps on his neko-te and dropping the black gloves on the blanket. ”Insightful words. But K’tesh is an inherently dangerous pursuit. If you lose focus, it will injure you at best. But we’re not muscle-bound boxers either. K’tesh requires both physical and mental perfection; a true marriage of the body and the mind.” All, of course, in the name of a higher purpose. ”You’ve no doubt grown stronger during your trip. It’s a start. Nothing more or less.”

For the next two candlemarks, Hsin lead Tsai through a series of increasingly rigorous exercises. It began with simple stretching exercises designed to loosen the limbs and avoid injury. Soon, Tsai would begin performing an endless set of calisthenics under her brother’s watchful eye. Push ups. Sit ups. Pull ups. Every imaginable ‘up’ performed to strengthen the arms and the upper body. ”K’tesh was invented by the katta,” explained Hsin as he demonstrated an exercise to strengthen the fingers beyond the merely human. ”Their country was conquered by the Dorin. Where military strength failed, they turned to insurgency and guerilla tactics. Fate gifted them with claws. We are not as lucky. However, the tenant remains. Think the unthinkable, exploit the weakness of your foes.” The warm-ups ended with a final, painful drill: push-ups performed whist balanced precariously upon the finger tips. ”You’re stronger than I was,” offered Hsin with a chuckle. ”But without practice. Meet me at the Rainbow Towers tomorrow morning. We’ll go for a run.”

”Now, a question. You and I must use metal sharpened in the form of a claw. Walking in the streets with half-inch blades attached to your hands will warn everyone of your allegiance.” Hsin had returned the pair to their original room and was busy sorting through the suitcase. He produced a pair black leather gloves and handed them carefully to Tsai. Attached to the tip of each gloves were three-quarters inch long claws forged from blacked elvish steel. Straps at the base of the glove allowed the Kemite girl to anchor the glove around her wrist. In effect, it would become a second skin. ”What if a group of men accost you while your gloves are in your pack?”

[Tsai Yuzhu Zhou]

With his starting words the training had begun. It was painful indeed, she had never endured such intense exertion of physical strength and building of muscle, as she had then. Her mind struggled to stay focused she knew something drove her she had seen a brief glimpse of it not to long ago. She exerted herself and become stronger with every passing moment. She listened to the leasons as they were taught to her about the history of this dark interest. Pain became the norm as her body tried to keep up stretching the limits of her body and hardening it. She smiled as hsin gave her a compliment of being stronger then she was it probably was not that true, she did garden but hsin had worked at the docks when he was a younger lad then he was now. She was amazed how she progressed.

She spoke little or none during this training she was more concentrating on what it was that she was doing. Something about this was strange to train to take someones life. What was it that she was doing, to kill was inherently evil. But sometimes killing to protect oneself was a necessity, but then again no one deserved to day. Force with light was no different then force with darkness, the intent was the only difference though she did not know where she was falling now that she was practicing in the dark learning their ideals. She would embrace the dark for now it would lead her to something she had not seen.

She ran, she practiced and she thought, and soon she found her way back to where they had started when hsin produced the claws. She examined them and slowly put them on watching as they encompassed her hands and become a dark layer over her soft skin. A strange feeling at first but they were a second skin they acted to every movement, it almost was a symbolic gesture as such. To cloack yourself in darkness one gained the power to snuff out a life. To change the course of history even.

Looking to hsin he explained what if she did not have these, these were darkness and wearing your darkness in front of people would only be a mistake. What is it you would do if you were asailed and has your darkness hidden away to where you could not access it. It was simple, run evade dodge, avoid, find a place where you could find your darkness and then strike back. She smiled slightly something new was forming in her and she did not know what.

”I suppose one would try to flee or avoid or even vanish.” Her voice was cold almost chill, something was changing in her for sure.

[Hsin]

Pain facilitated change. Only through affliction could a person fully harness the Will to achieve a particular Purpose. The methods and the motivation mattered little to Hsin; merely watching the events unfolding within the mind of his sister filled the Kemite with a certain glee. Tendrils of psionic essence siphoned the entirety of Tsai’s inner dialogue into her eldest brother’s mind. Evidently, the earlier spellcraft served as a catalyst for the emergence of thoughts long-suppressed and chained by their upbringing. Her entire demeanor seemed suddenly warped by the newest of revelations. A slow smile spread across Hsin’s face as Tsai answered his question more than satisfactory. Her voice, her face was enough to ignite an unearthly joy in the Kemite mystic. ”Very good,” congratulated her teacher with the accompaniment of a trio of soft claps. ”There’s no dishonor in flight. There’s a time for bravery in the face of overwhelming danger, and there’s a time to conserve one’s strength and flee. You learn to distinguish between the two only through experience.”

Hsin stood in the middle of the room facing Tsai. He began in a simulacrum of a normalcy with his feet spread a shoulder’s length apart. After a moment, his right foot shifted backwards until the toes of the right feet were just behind the heel of the left. ”This is the forward stance. Your weight remains on your left foot, but never become rooted to the ground. Keep the weight evenly distributed across the entire sole of your feet. Give it a try.” He waited a few moments for his sister to settle into a proper stance before offering a few tidbits of advice and correction. After a few moments, Hsin returned to his former position and began to step forward and backwards, left and right in a complex dance. ”Any fighting technique demands agility and speed. You must learn to move quickly without compromising your stance. Now move.”

The Kemite watched patiently for a moment before launching a slow kick towards Tsai’s left kneecap. It was a blow entirely without rancor or malice, but would still deliver a painful reminder if it connected. However, it was till slow enough for even the inexperienced Kemite girl to dodge. But how?