[Flashback] The thin line between blue and green

[Akela]

Sometime in 507 AV, somewhere in the Sea of Grass

A whiff of breeze infused temporary life in Akela's white hair as she stood motionless in what may as well have been the dead center of the Sea of Grass. Her Strider, a purebred stallion named Glimmer, fretted nervously a good thirthy meters behind, having sensed the danger at the same time as his rider. From behind a large boulder, perhaps a remnant of the fiery things that had crossed the skies in the Valterrian, the razor-sharp appendage of the aptly named Glassbeak came into view. It seemed to have been resting up to that moment; it hadn't been a planned ambush like so many others the Drykas had learned to know and fear.

The predator's vibrant plumage looked almost cheerful in sharp contrast to the deadly danger it posed. It wasn't quite yet an adult, though it was getting there soon enough and it already knew all the steps of the hunt. The beast planted its sharp talons in the ground and turned its head towards the Konti girl. The Sea of Grass seemed to stand still as two consciousnesses met and coped with the realization that only one of them would live. The Glassbeak snarled and made a mad rush at the woman, its legs pressing the ground with impossible power. A Glassbeak's charge was a nightmare made true, a flurry of natural blades and feathers that resembled a force of nature rather than the onslaught of a creature of flesh and blood.

Akela, elder daughter of Eachann, Ankal of the Denusk Pavilion via his third wife Ay'aka, knew there was no sense in running. She wouldn't even make it halfway to where Glimmer was, and even if she made it by some miracle the Glassbeak could outrun even her Strider. She watched the beast devour the precious ground between them with a killer instinct tuned by countless generations of the cruel game of life. Unlike her sister Kavala, Akela didn't have the innate talent for knowing the feelings of animals, but she thought she could taste the bloodthirst in the air, and it attracted her just as much as it frightened her.

She didn't hate the bird; on the contrary, she admired its perfection as a tool for shredding and ripping. It had remarkable purpose, the very thing Akela had always been struggling with. The Glassbeak knew what it was, at least on some primal level; Akela could not make the same claim. She wasn't Drykas enough for the Drykas and she wasn't Konti enough for the Konti. She was little more than a name and a sword sheathed at her side. Before her life started rolling before her eyes in the few instants that remained, the Konti relaxed and sync'ed her breathing to the rhythm of her consciousness. Her pale hand slipped down to the hilt of her nameless katana, gripping it lightly as one would a delicate memento.

Akela frowned and tried to remember.

[Akela]

Akela liked to boast that she'd been born with a blade in her hands, but it had been her father, the Ankal Eachann who'd first recognized her talent for sharp weapons. It had been clear right away that the firstborn daughter was no average Konti for she lacked gnosis marks at birth, which marked her as an oddity to her race favored by not one, but two goddesses. Later on, when a mouth that should have been dumb first mentioned the "curse" of the Konti sisters, the lack of gnosis served as fuel in support of the argument. Her mother did not love her less for it, of course, but it had made people talk. The fact her sensitivity never awoke was further proof, for what use was a Konti who couldn't feel or predict a thing?

Akela could barely walk when she picked up a stick and began swinging it around, though not with the careless violence that is often seen in young children, but with a calculated care that gave her genuine joy. She wasn't smacking the stick into things, she was understanding how it worked, and how she worked with it. Ay'aka first thought of arming Akela with the suvai, the traditional weapon of the Konti seers, but upon seeing a wooden replica the child shook her head and said that it was "broken", "missing a piece". It couldn't "cut the blue and green" like the stick did.

When asked what she meant by cutting the blue and green, Akela picked up the stick with both hands and swung it along the horizont, splitting along the imaginary line between heaven and earth. She gave a wide grin too, showing off a missing tooth or two and wondering why these grown-ups couldn't get something so obvious. Eachann then took matters into his own hands. By this time Akela's younger sister Kavala had reassured the Pavilion with her more traditional Konti traits, and Akela's strangeness as a Konti swordswoman would not be scrutinized as much. Having tested several practice blades, Akela happily concluded that the katana was the bestest of all at cutting the blue and green. Her parents had never seen her so happy before; Akela tended to be a bit of a problem child, sometimes bullying the other children and getting away with it as the Ankal's daughter. With a sword in her hand, though, she was totally content and harmless to the community at large.

Eachann himself taught her the basics, even though he wasn't a specialist of the katana. Akela soon took to practicing alone, for her budding style was very different from her father's view on bladed combat. Where others saw a means of killing others, she saw a means of understanding things. Only Kavala seemed to grasp what it meant to her, and ironically her sister was a total pacifist. Cutting something carried the burden of understanding it first; it was the difference between a warrior and a butcher. Akela grew up with dreams of challenging others who also grasped this truth, facing one master after another in a quest for perfection - the way of the sword.

She dreamed of engaging the fabled Eypharians and seeing them juggle three or even six blades in their gilded hands, imagining it as some kind of hypnotic dance of steel. She wanted to fight the strongest among the mighty Akalak whose physical strength was unmatched, and she wished to fight the legendary savages of Falyndar who were said to devour those fallen in battle. She was just one Konti, but, as she'd once put it in front of her half-brother Vanator, "Every now and then a Konti is born to kick ass," and she'd always tried to live up to that statement.

At least until Ay'aka's death.

[Akela]

The Glassbeak let out an excited shrill, and Akela silently counted the seconds. Five left, give or take. She suppressed her own bloodlust with an act of will; it suited the predator to perfection, but it couldn't win the battle for the Konti. She breathed with her enemy, she understood its frenzy, but she must not become like it. Even in empathy there must be a line of separation never to be crossed. She supposed it was a lesson most Konti learned early in their lives, but it was a revelation of sorts to Akela, whose Konti senses were mostly obstructed.

She inhaled what she knew was her penultimate breath before the clash, her sword still sheathed at her side. She wondered why she hadn't drawn yet, why her pale hand lingered near the hilt but stopped short of exposing the katana, the advocate of her survival. There was power in a sword sheathed, a tiny voice inside her rose and reassured the girl. Where did that power come from, she asked herself. The answer came along immediately. The boundless power of possibilities. A naked blade was one blade. A blade in its scabbard was one hundred thousand blades ready to spring. But which one would it be? She must choose carefully, for the right blade may very well be just one among the hundred thousand.

Ay'aka's death had also been a matter of tiny possibilities being realized. An Ankal's bride falling from her horse and dying was like blasphemy to the Drykas, people literally born on horseback. Akela had secretly hated horses for that, and her hate had lasted a long time. She would spend entire days practicing the sword by herself, and as the Pavilion began to distrust her the feeling became mutual. She didn't look like them, didn't think like them, didn't act like them. What was keeping her among their ilk now? Her father? But he'd conceived a fully human son, Vanator, who would in time take his place at the helm of the Pavilion. Vanator was a cool guy, and she loved him dearly, but he was as Drykas as they came. Kavala? She'd left for Mura to learn the ways of the Konti.

Who are you, Akela?

The last breath filled up her nostrils, shallow and full of uncertain smells as all last breaths are.

[Akela]

Slender fingers pressed tightly against the hilt of the katana. She could make out the details in the Glassbeak's plumage, and while they could not truly lock their eyes on each other, a part of Akela enjoyed the attention in a twisted kind of way. She imagined the bird's razor-sharp beak shredding her supple flesh and swallowing it whole. Years later, when her slavery at the taloned hands of the Zith would open her eyes to many things in life, she would realize she had found the vision arousing on a deep, forbidden level. What overwhelming desire, what beautiful machine nature had built and deployed on the Sea of Grass. But the Glassbeak's instinct would also be its downfall; Akela had understood that much. Had she treated the opponent like a human one, she would surely have been killed.

The katana slid out of its sheath just at the right time. The Glassbeak was, after all, a bird: a fairly intelligent animal, but still an animal. If it could not see the blade, then the blade did not exist in its world. The fact this one was a young specimen with limited experience with the Drykas riders added to the naiveté of its assault. Older Glassbeaks hunted in packs, like the ones that had butchered Vanator's first wife. Of course, Akela had been blamed for that as well. For not having been there. It had never been clear if they held it against her to not have fought to save the woman, or to not have died alongside her.

Akela stepped aside as the Glassbeak lunged at her, holding the Katana horizontally - splitting earth and heaven - at the height of its neck. She clutched the sword tightly, knowing that her grip would make all the difference. There was no time for the beast to stop its charge or even redirect its momentum. Its own speed brought about its undoing, not Akela's strength. It simply ran into the sharp end of the katana. Akela tried to jump to the left to avoid the charge, but she found herself partially trampled by the creature and fell aside, rolling several times on the grass while her bloodied sword landed several paces away.

Akela gave a light moan and pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her entire body was feeling sore from the impact, and she would likely have broken a lot of frail Konti bones had she taken its power in full. What she saw took her breath away. The Glassbeak, with a deep slash across its throat that was releasing obscene amounts of dark blood, still dragged itself on towards her. The sword was too far, and even if she'd been able to reach it, she found herself mesmerized by the sight of the advancing Glassbeak. It must have known it was dying, and still moved on for the kill, slower and slower. It collapsed halfway through, and continued its mad advance at a crawl.

A couple steps away from the girl, it finally ran out of strength. It extended its neck in the parody of an attack, but this was as far as it would go. Akela got back on her feet, retrieved her katana and kneeled by the moribund Glassbeak. She ran a fingertip along the sharpness, just enough to make it bleed, and then pressed the finger against the creature's beak. "Here, have a little of mine. You've earned it." Then she smiled, stood straight, and lowered her blade, decapitating the Glassbeak.

Chimes later, her sword clean and her heart no longer racing, she called out to her Strider. Glimmer had run away like any responsible horse, but not too far away, and Akela found him easily. "We are leaving the Pavilion. Here and now." She said as she mounted, "That little one just taught me a few things about life... and living it to the fullest."

F I N

[Baku]

Thou has written, and thou has completed, so I award thee the following.... Akela: +1 Detection, +3 Observation, +2 Tactics, +3 Katana, +1 Evasion Lore: Glassbeak Ambushes, The Unspoken Conversation of Battle, Holding Your Ground When Running is Pointless, The Fear and Excitement of Mortal Danger, Struggling with Purpose, Preparing the Strike, Understanding the Movements of a Melee Weapon, The Love of a Blade, Cutting Between the Blue and Green, The Basics of Swordplay, Having Your Own Style, Akela Philosophy: What it Means to Cut Something, Past Dreams, Patience for the Strike, Akela Special Attack: Splitting Heaven and Earth, Showing Respect to the Glassbeak, Finding a Meaning in Life Additional Notes: A very interesting glimpse into Akela’s past, and how she came about her directed course in life. As well, it shows how much can actually go on in the course of a battle aside from just a swing of the weapon. Nice work.