-Der’ari-
The following morning, Kuro and Jarou met with an exhausted looking Rel. Kuro guessed - correctly - that the older Hunter had yet to sleep. He marvelled at his senior’s endurance and ability to simply keep moving. “The trick is to keep yourself busy at all times,” Rel explained when he asked about how he was managing, “You don’t really feel tired if you have no time to think about how tired you are.”
“So,” Jarou interjected, getting the three back on task, “What is our job for today?”
“For the first half of the day, I’d like the two of you on wall duty. You’ll be assisting some of Sen’anum’s soldiers near Gold’s Gate, at the North end of the city. You are to report to a man called Terib atop the wall as soon as possible. I would advise you to eat something then head over there immediately. You’ll be relieving Vel, who I want to come back here for a rest break - she’s been working nonstop for the last two days. Tell her it’s an order for me, and she should listen. As for the second half of the day, I’ll likely have you accompany Lord Er’anum on his evening errands, but plans may change. I’ll be sending someone to relieve you both, and they’ll carry with them your next task.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Jarou said, looking at Kuro with his one exposed eye. Kuro nodded in agreement, and Rel dismissed them. The two young Hunters bowed their heads slightly in acknowledgement and got themselves some breakfast.
Gold’s Gate was a good trek from the embassy, taking well over an hour. There was some commotion on the other side of the wall when they arrived. Upon hearing battlecries, Kuro and Jarou quickened their pace to a run, looking to provide reinforcement. They arrived just in time to see a large sigil with ropes around three of its eight limbs, held down by soldiers in heavy looking armor. Just as they began to approach in earnest, a figure draped in white launched off of the city wall, brandishing a sword nearly as large as its wielder. She spun in a dizzying continuous front flip, and brought the large weapon crashing down in the center of the Sigil’s body. As the body began to disintegrate, an ash covered Vel appeared from where she had made her incision. She dismissed her blade into her Demon Sheath as she stretched her arms above her head, yawning loudly. She had a big smile on her face, affirming to Kuro that she was one of many Hunters who truly enjoyed combat.
“Oh, Kuro! And Jarou!” She said with a hand raised in greeting as she approached. Her enthusiastic voice made Kuro wonder if she truly had been going nonstop for as long as Rel had said. “Here to relieve me of wall duty? Where’s our fearless leader want me to go next?”
“He wants you to rest,” Jarou explained, “Have you really been going nonstop for two whole days?”
She thought about it for a moment, “I guess I have, haven’t I? It’s mostly been boring work, wrapping up super easy Hunts that the trainees couldn’t finish before we kicked them out, or escorting the dusty ol’ Lords from place to place. The worst is overnight guard duty, though I thankfully managed to avoid that last night. I’ve only had two or three Sigils attack since yesterday evening, hardly enough to keep myself entertained.” She was really complaining about not having to fight? “But if the commander orders it, I guess I have to. Hey, Terib!” She called out to a man still standing on the wall - he was difficult to make out from this distance. “These two are here to replace me, I’ll send them up your way!” She yelled the call through cupped hands, though Kuro wasn’t confident that would be enough for him to hear her. The distant man raised a hand, which seemed to be a signal of acknowledgement.
Vel motioned for the boys to follow her. Just inside the gate, down a small road right up against the wall, there was a door at the foot of a watchtower. Pointing from where they stood at the gate, she explained, “The door is unlocked during the day, so you can just go on in. Head up the stairs until you reach the fourth floor, then out the door opposite the stairs.” After her explanation, she gave a brief, silent farewell, and walked off into the city on her own.
They followed her instructions, only to find a man in a decorated uniform standing at the door they were instructed to go out. “Oh, it’s you two,” the man said, “You were part of our escort for the Peace Party last year, weren’t you?”
“We were, it’s good to see you again,” Jarou said, giving a respectful bow which Kuro mimicked.
“Allow me to extend my Lord’s gratitude, as well as my own, for helping out.” He said, opening the door behind him, motioning for the younger men to follow him out. “This isn’t the most glamorous job, but it’s an important one. Our soldiers and guards aren’t the best equipped to, nor the most experienced with combat against Sigils. We don’t usually get many in this region, not to mention this close to this city.” He sighed, placing a hand on the top part of the wall and looking out towards the sparse woods just North of the city. “I remember a time, many, many years ago when stories of the creatures bearing the Sigil of the Soulless were told to misbehaving children to get them to behave. The Sigils were still a reality then, but they were so few and far between we would go years without seeing a single one, on either side of the rift.”
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“Almost sounds like a completely different world,” Jarou commented.
“Indeed,” Terib muttered ruefully, “Not as fanciful as the old, world, back before the Ashen Realm was called such. The Dyn’ya family has managed to preserve a sparse few records from those days. Der’ari Vai’ra let me read one, once, back when we were probably about your age.”
“Der’ari?” Kuro asked. It had been a while since he heard an Alten term he was unfamiliar with.
“Ah, it’s a title given to the military’s greatest swordsmen and women. Very few ever obtain the title. It would be a touch improper for me not to refer to her without it right now, since I’m on the job and all.”
“She was also with us during the Peace Party, wasn’t she?” Kuro asked.
“Correct, though she hadn’t quite received her title at that point. She was still merely a commander, like myself.”
“So,” Jarou interjected, attempting to steer the conversation back to the job, “What exactly do you want us to do up here?”
“Oh, right. If you look along the walls, you can see another watchtower not far from this one in either direction.” He pointed to the West, directly at the other tower he was speaking of. He said “not far,” but it would be a nearly twenty minute walk to it. Looking the other direction, Kuro confirmed there was another tower about the same distance away. “Each of you will pick a side, and patrol from this tower to the further one, keeping an eye out for suspicious people outside the walls, as well as any approaching Sigils.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Kuro said, with Jarou agreeing silently next to him. “‘I’ll do the East side?” Kuro continued, looking to Jarou for his opinion.
“Sure, sounds good to me. Maybe if we want or need to we can switch later, as well,” the red-haired boy answered.
They split up, waving farewell as Jarou disappeared into the tower they’d just recently climbed. Not before they each received a small device that would send up a signal flare for when they find something that would need attention. “I’ll accompany you on one round each,” Terib had explained after handing the flare guns to the Hunters, “but after that, I’ll entrust the watch to you. These signallers make a hell of a lot of noise, so even though I’ll be resting, I should be able to hear it and come to help.” He turned to Kuro, patting him on the shoulder, “I’ll go with you, first.”
The two walked in silence for the first stretch of their rounds. It was only after they turned around, and the sun caught on Terib’s various medals just right, that Kuro broke the silence. “I thought the Sen’anum family and its Nobles were mostly interested in finance and the like? But you and Der’ari Vai’ra are under him, right?”
Terib nodded, “Correct. The Dyn’ya family’s main branch, which Der’ari Vai’ra is the current head of, is under Raen, but they are a family with a very lengthy history, and are spread out all over the place, but they’ve always been a very militaristic clan, as has my own family. Each of the eight Lords have at least one military-focused family of Nobles in their employ; a measure put in place by the Last King to ensure each of his children would have adequate protection. Lord Er’anum is the only one who has a majority of military families, and I believe Lord Onn’anum and Kats’anum are tied for the smallest military presence, having only one family each.”
“But the realms have been at peace for so long. Why have so many families dedicated to combat?” Kuro pursued.
“These days, the majority of our army is relegated to guard and policing duty. Besides keeping the peace and protecting our Lords, there have been a few small scale wars in the past. They don’t get talked about often because they aren’t us humans against the demons, but usually fighting entirely on our side of the Rift. Ten years ago or so was the last major conflict I participated in. Two small villages to the South of Royal City had a petty feud that eventually escalated to all out war, and we had to step in and stop it. In the end one of the villages was completely destroyed, and all of its citizens had to be relocated, or rebuild their homes.”
“That sounds like it would be hard to go through,” Kuro said. He couldn’t imagine not living in Tsumi’din. No less, he couldn’t imagine the city being destroyed to the extent he was forced out of his home.
Satisfied with the answer, Kuro returned his attention to the job, looking out over the forest just North of the city. True to his word, Terib then switched sides and patrolled with Jarou. Kuro always felt Jarou was better at conversing and generally socializing with people, their clients especially. Kuro typically kept his conversations to be about the job, or like today, seeking answers to his own curiosities. He wondered what kind of conversation his friend would have with the seasoned veteran, he was confident they would talk the entire time they were over together. After he’d reached the far tower again, and when the angle was right and he was close enough to see, he was not at all surprised to see Jarou motioning with his hands, as he often did when talking.
The rest of their time on the wall passed, almost entirely without incident. Tesar, the black cloaked, red haired woman who had spoken a bit during their briefing, had come to relieve the younger Hunters right at sunset. She was paired with Genmis, a black cloaked girl with blue hair and yellow eyes, who had been absent during the previous night’s briefing. They had met inside the central tower in their area, and were about to discuss Kuro and Jarou’s next task, when an incredible loud boom sounded from the top floor of the watchtower. They all rushed outside to find the largest Sigil Kuro had ever seen, shambling its way out of the nearby woods.
It was a grotesque thing, with six arms sprouting from its back. As it had no legs, it had to drag its body along the ground in order to move. Kuro could feel from this distance the air pressure change as it absorbed the nearby aether with such gluttony he couldn’t help but be impressed. With how dull the past few hours had been, Kuro was excited for the opportunity to fight something. He eagerly summoned his sword from his Demon Sheath and jumped off the wall.
