His name was Jukahn, the Chained. That is what he told me when he pulled me aside after reaching the village of Sonata. “Young prince,” he addressed me, “you have an incredible burden that has been placed on your shoulders. You are the vengeful soul of the Lione Kingdom, of King Alexander, and of Queen Lhianna. Their unspoken rage is trapped within you and you do not yet have the voice to express their anger. I can give you that voice but you have to come with me.”
I had already had a long horse ride to think over all that had happened. Only a few questions came to mind when he made his offer. “What will happen to my sister?” It was then that he removed the mask, showing me that he was human after al with a face that had a finely groomed black goatee but there was something about him that was off; something different. I could tell by his complexion that he wasn’t from South Embre. He had come from the mainland.
“She will stay here with this couple. They are good people, loyal to the former Queen and King, and they will protect your sister and keep her hidden from anyone who would come after her. That self-sacrifice is wasted if you do not make something of it. If you stay here with your sister, your life will be quiet; it’s true. However the tale of the Warrior King and the Queen of the Sun end with them being murdered in their beds and their children never heard from again.”
I narrowed my gaze at him. “You sound like you are trying to bribe me with glory and anger. How will revenge bring my parents back from the dead? How will revenge rebuild my home? Where will you take me that can ever make up for everything that had just happened?” I could feel the hot reminder of pain in tears that streaked down my face, collecting at my chin and dripping down onto my shift. I knew that all the pain in the world was playing out in my eyes.
“Your sister has her entire life ahead of her. She has the potential to make anything out of it but what I saw back there; you have the potential keep people like that safe from the same people that killed your parents. You have the potential to keep people like that alive by protecting them. Your sister has the world at her fingertips, but with the exception of her, you have nothing. You are an empty vessel and I would fill you with immortality.”
His words did sway me little by little, but it was looking at Melody that convinced me what to do. I watched her speak with the couple who would take care of her, the same couple that I’m sure would take care of me, but I didn’t want to be taken care of. I didn’t want to be safe and comfortable. Jukahn had chipped at the crust of my Embre until hot magma had burst forth and for the first time in my life, I was near erupting with a hunger for wrath. I wasn’t naïve enough to think Jukahn’s intentions were entirely pure, but if he wanted to make me a weapon where my father would have made me a man, then I’ll be both a shield to protect Melody and a sword to slay the beasts that hunt her.
I agreed to Jukahn’s offer again and again, even after he explained that I would be taken far from my homeland and far from my sister, going a long period of time without seeing her. I was blinded by vindication. I returned to my sister to hear her arguing in a voice twisted in pain. I had never heard her so sad and angry before. It was all I could do to comfort her but I had to tell her the truth: that she couldn’t come with me and she wouldn’t be seeing me for a long time.
If she had to stay, she didn’t want me to leave. If I had to leave, she didn’t want to stay. There were two paths and neither was large enough for both of us to walk together. I explained to her as best as I could that this is what was meant to be. We had to go separate ways if we ever wanted to meet up again. We can’t both survive staying in the Lione Kingdom. Even if we could, it would not be a life worth living.
She finally accepted the misfortune for the promise of something greater blossoming from its ashes. We embraced each other one last time. Even in the chill of the morning and the coldness of her grief, she radiated with a warmth that spread into my heart, resting there as the final thing of hers that I could take with me. I told her I’d miss her. I told her that I loved her. I told her that I would see her again. Lastly, I told her that the stranger would watch out for me. In that moment, all I truly wanted from that man was to not make me a liar.
We got back on the horse after I was able to tell my sister goodbye and headed even further north, to the small harbor that belonged to the village. There, a boat was waiting for us. It was the same size as a fishing boat, not meant to hold more than a handful of passengers and aside from the captain and two crew members, Jukahn and I were the only passengers present.
The boat ferried us across the Alblu, which I thought I wouldn’t see until I had become king and was on my way to visit foreign dignitaries. The Alblu is a sea of water that divides the mainland from South Embre and it can be very hazardous to those who don’t know how to navigate it. They say that a large expanse of the sea is made up of the titan of water, Delunari. This might be a rumor though made up by sailors betrayed by the dangers of an angry ocean. We faced no such anger on our journey and managed to make it safely to the mainland.
We stopped at the port of Harusame, a port city that served as the crux of a kingdom in Eastern Embre. We had made it to the mainland but there was further to go. What time we spent in Harusame was to rest before the next part of our journey. I had to wear a cloak to keep myself hidden. It wasn’t that anyone would recognize me for the lost prince of the Lione Kingdom, but because my skin tone was darker than the pale people of Eastern Embre. Natives of Southern Embre knew the sun’s warmth more intimately, and thus easily stood out against the people who lived in colder or more neutral climates.
Jukahn rented us a room in an inn for the night where we could rest but he didn’t stay in the room. I had gotten my fill of sleep for most of the boat ride when the thrill of crossing the Alblu had worn and fatigue finally took its hold of me. So I stayed up for the better part of the night reading some books that were put in the room for the comfort and entertainment of guests. None of them were particularly interesting but I settled on the only book that I was willing to read past the first six pages without becoming too bored to go on.
It was a novel meant to romanticize history and I never really had a chance to find it again to finish it. It was rather well written for what I would have easily passed off as a trash written in the span of a few weeks. The concept occurs in the Age of Chaos where a man unknowingly falls for a woman who is actually a physical form created to house the combined consciousness of three titans. These titans were Clothene, Atrae, and Lechesai who represented the ethereal concepts of life, time, and death. My historical studies touched on them briefly but I only had the chance to learn enough about them to know that the book would most likely end with the woman, who was named Tria after the ancient tongue for three, giving birth to a set of triplets historically known as the first everchild, the first mythish, and the first necromancer.
I got as far as the man and woman settling down for a life away from the strict tribes of other humans trying desperately not to anger the already warring gods when the sun invaded the room. It was time to pack up what little supplies we had (all his) and leave. Jukahn handed me a loaf of bread and a small canteen of apple water to break my fast, instructing me to eat on the way out because we did not have the time to stay. Either it was urgent to arrive at our destination or there was something up with the room where we had to leave the inn as quickly as possible. I never found out which. I did notice that we avoided speaking to the innkeeper as we hurried out.
In short time, we were back on the horse and heading west towards the Rainlands, taking the River Road through the vast forests. I noticed that there was a greater variety of trees within the Rainlands that I had not even read about. Some of them were very thin but also appeared to be remarkably durable. They were like single stocks that went straight up with a few large leaf-laden branches at the top. As we went further and further through the wet landscape, the trees grew thicker and more decorated with leaves, branches, and even fruit. Such a large variety of plant life most likely also had a large variety of animal life dwelling within them. I had heard that a small number of elf tribes hide within the vast forest as well. I had never met an elf before.
The further west we went, the higher into the mountains we’d go until we diverted off the path at a large rock, misplaced on the side of the road. It appeared as a normal boulder, about a couple feet tall, with no distinguishing marks or unique shape. One could easily overlook it if they did not notice that it was the only rock that size along the River Road for miles. There was no path hidden beyond the rock until a good ten minutes of seemingly aimless wandering through the woods. If we had not been traveling in a straight line since leaving the path or if our direction had been off by just the smallest degree, we would have missed it altogether.
The path weaved through a number of hills before breaking into a small valley and nestled within the center of that miniature valley was a village that took up much of it. The houses were made out of the sturdy but thin trees I had seen earlier and they ranged from small, one-person huts to larger, simplistic structures. We were greeted as we came through the gate by the villagers. They wore simple clothing and sandals on their feet in place of boots and shoes. Many of them wore short-sleeved robes that also stopped just above their knees with only a select few even wearing pants. Men and women seem to dress the same way as did the children.
We dismounted and a man in green with his hair tied atop his head in a short knot took the reins of the horse and led it towards a nearby stable. Jukahn hitched his small sack of supplies onto his shoulder and lead the way down the center of the village. “This is Shinohari,” he explained halfway through the town. “It is hidden within the Rainlands and its people are ruled by no one and protected by us.” When he said us, it sounded as if he was including me. I was only here to learn how to protect my, sister. I had no plans of protecting a village of people I had never met before and who I owed no loyalty to.
Sensing this, he went on to say, “you are now a member of the Shinohari. As such, you are going to begin your training as one of its protectors. When you learn how to defend and support a people who are not your own as if they were you flesh and blood, you will be the savior your sister needs to rescue her from the monsters lurking in the shadows; the monsters that took your life away.” He knelt down, his tone lowering with him so that only I could hear him. “And to stop the monsters in the dark, you must live among them and become as they are.”
I didn’t understand what that meant. How was I to become a monster? How would becoming a monster save my sister? The last thing he said before he lead me to the great hall sitting at the end of the village furthest from the entrance was “Born in darkness, living in darkness, light may only come in death.” He seemed to take some joy in switching between speaking in a straightforward manner and speaking in riddles. It kept me confused but it at least it kept me thinking.
The hall itself was not what I expected. It was mostly empty, decorated with weapons along the walls including many copies of the thin sword that Jukahn used as well as swords and knives in all sorts of shapes and sizes. There were other odd weapons: considerably short throwing daggers, chains like the one Jukahn used, short sickles, a long scythe, much shorter versions of the blade but still too long to be knives, gloves with claws on them, blades that looked like they strapped to the wrists, spools of wire, balls of packed gunpowder but no guns, staves, glaives, flails, and many others. It was a room of death. The only thing that decorated the floor of the room was a small assortment of training dummies similar to the ones I used to train with back home. That’s when I guessed that the hall was a sort of training barrack. “Training for what,” I wondered.
We weren’t alone, either. At the far end of the hall, sitting in front of a wall with a large mural painted on it, a figure was facing away from us. First, I looked at the mural. It was a painting of some forest in the middle of some mountains, mostly greens and blues except for a large patch in the middle of the painting. Red and yellow and other angry colors blended together in a great fire nestled within those woods. I must have been studying it too long because Jukahn noticed, giving me the answer to a question I hadn’t asked out loud. “These mountains are the ones in the painting and the fire is this village.”
The stranger that was slumped in front of the painting and possibly asleep proved to actually be in meditative thought and Jukahn’s words broke that concentration. Rising up and turning in one motion, I saw that it was a woman. Her black and gray hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she appeared to be older than Jukahn, but by how much I couldn’t say. The most distinguishing feature I noted was the eye patch that hid her right eye. When she spoke, her voice had a rasp that comes with age but enough chime to it to make me think that she had a beautiful voice when she was younger.
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“Saban painted that when Sahil was still alive; before they left on that mission and only Saban returned.” She began approaching me, her steps inaudible on the wooden floor. Then I noticed I was the only one of the three of us who could be heard. Something I would learn to avoid, I suppose. As she stood in front of me, hands folded behind her back, I realized that she was shorter than Jukahn. Looking up at Jukahn, I saw a great deal of respect and even the barest hint of adoration seeping through his steel gaze. She was the one who introduced herself, offering out a hand in a friendly gesture. “My name is Junoro, the Winged,” she said as I took her hand and shook it in greeting.
“My name is Kael Lione. It is an honor to meet you, Junoro,” I replied.
She smiled at me a sort of knowing smile and withdrew her hand, then looked to Jukahn. “He is certainly well-mannered, I’ll give him that. A prince?”
Jukahn gave a quick nod to the woman. “Of course, mistress. He had killed the man sent to kill him and one other before I found him. He shows remarkable promise as steel fit for folding over and over into the finest sword.”
They were going to make me a weapon after all. I remained silent, letting them speak rather than going after them for details. Junoro was the one to volunteer the information. “Kael, you are going to be trained by Jukahn, the Chained to be one of us just as Jukahn was trained by me before you and I was trained by Juli, the Rain before him in succession going all the way back to our founder, Juen the Beginning.”
Jukahn continued for her. “We protect this village of Shinohari but we also do more than that. We have the power of manipulating the course of history. We offer this power at a very high price to those who wish to see the fate of their kingdom, people, or Embre itself moved in their favor. This price that is paid for the power we wield is spent keeping these people healthy and hidden from the rest of the world, as the last bastion of Embre. We are merchants of death and the gold we are paid reinforces the gates of paradise.”
I understood what was to become of me. Over the course of many years, I would be trained to become a merchant of death as they were. Shinohari survives based on a line of successive swords for hire that sell their blades to those who wish to shift the path their lives are taking. Though we may be used as spies or bodyguards, it is our role as assassins that truly decides the future of the entire world outside of Shinohari.
I found out that before I had been taken here, there were three lineages and each were descendant from Juen’s teachings. The more direct line is distinguishable by the prefix “Ju” as in Jukahn, Junoro, and Juli as well as many others leading back centuries to Juen himself. The next line comes from Reika, the Uncaged and ends with Reina the Legion who trained at the same time as Jukahn. Their line all contains the prefix “Rei”. The third started from Salial, the Sun who came to Shinohari after Reika and his line ended with Saban, the End who not only predicted the end of his line and Reika’s but also brought it about when he turned mad. He trained at the same time as Reina and Jukahn and went insane, killing Reina, her master, his own master, and himself. The gift of foresight is seldom a gift at all.
By the time I finished my training, I would be given a name with the prefix of “Ju” in addition to choosing my title. Each is chosen for a reason that best describes the nature of the person who chooses it and takes the entire length of training to discover a title that fits. Jukahn is called “The Chained” because he believes that we are all chained to something; some of us to fate or responsibility and some of us to our own mortality. Junoro is called “The Winged” because she favors the high ground above all else, striking from the sky. If she truly had wings, she’d soar above the clouds and never return to solid ground again. She only feels free when gravity itself has little to no hold over her. There are others I learned about as well, such as Reina who was called “The Legion” because she could become anyone or anything and Saban so-called “The End” because he knew he would inevitably end Salial’s line and Reika’s line as well.
The training was not easy but there was something easy about living in Shinohari. It was a more comfortable lifestyle than what I was used to at the castle. There was no pressure on me and the only weight on my shoulders was to finish my training and find my sister. It was short-sighted, I know, but it was comforting because, for the first time, I felt like I had freedom. Somewhere along the way, I lost myself or at least I lost what I thought was me. I lost Kael Lione, and maybe that was their intention. Maybe that was Jukahn’s intention; to create a blank slate and hammer into me through discipline and philosophy a new being that was neither a man nor a weapon. He would be Shinohari and nothing else.
I didn’t want that to happen. Because, in doing so, I would lose my sister. If I didn’t always have her in my mind, if I didn’t keep the reason why I was doing this in the first place, I would truly be nothing. I knew that was what they meant for me and it was all I could do to give the illusion that they were making of me exactly that. Jukahn’s teachings were very much along this line. Many of the lessons ended reminding me that “You do not last forever, initiate. While you are here, you must become something greater than what you started out as and to do that, you must cast off the chains and clear yourself of whatever corrupts you. Become inane, empty as the void, with no purpose so that you may take on a purpose worthy of your unique existence.”
The physical training was demanding for someone born human, nearly impossible in fact, but my titanian heritage gave me an edge against the grueling regimen of muscles and stamina training. They had no way of challenging me other than to increase the frequency in which I was pushed to my limits. I ached and I sweat but I survived and came out stronger each time I was sent through the fire. It wasn’t until after a year that my training became more focused. I was taught to move quickly without making a noise. To be very precise in every gesture with no wasted movement. I was taught to quickly observe and react. I was taught critical thinking and problem solving, weapons training, hand-to-hand combat, disabling an opponent, confusion, infiltration, deception, disguise, misdirection, observation, and many other skills that would benefit me as a merchant of death. I was not only taught, I was practiced in each of these over many years.
The mental training was much like the physical mixed with history lessons and teachings about those who had come before me. I was also taught mathematics, language, geography, culture, and much more that would have been my standard course of learning back in Lione had my life continued down the track it was meant for. But there was more to it, though. There were a lot more lessons about the harsh reality of people, of their nature and what drives men. I was always taught that all evil derives from the hunger. The hunger is an emptiness that all beings are born with desiring to be filled, even though by its nature, it can never be. Jukahn taught me that the hunger is just part of the need to survive. We have an innate need to stay alive as long and as comfortable as possible and the hunger is just the part that tells us what we don’t want to admit: “We survive through the sacrifice of others”. It made much of my training seem contradictory.
I learned very little about Jukahn during my constant time with him as far as who he was, where he came from, and what he wanted out of life. However, I did learn a lot about his way of thinking. Jukahn believed that nothing born on this world may exist forever. They used to believe that the gods were the only true immortals other than the titans, but two foolish wars and godly blood being spilled all across Embre proved that while they were not as a frail as we are, they are far from unending. Jukahn believed that was the nature of all things to come from Embre. He wasn’t nihilistic. He always spoke as if waiting somewhere over the horizon, there was a way for someone to transcend that truth. It was his way to speak as if he knew something no one else did. Some truth of existence that we were always meant to know but he was the first and only to understand it.
It wasn’t all training. I had much time to learn of the people of Shinohari and about Jukahn’s mentor, Junoro. The people of Shinohari were refugees when an Eastern Embre warlord tore through their original home as part of his path to conquer the eastern mainland and rule over the land from the north coast to the south coast and from the high mountains of the Rainlands to the large island of Devil Isle. This warlord sent his spies and assassins to each homeland he sought to conquer to defeat them through espionage and shadow tactics so that the enemy was brought down from the inside before his army destroyed the husk of what was left. A man among these dark infiltrators saw the madness and the tragedy befalling those the warlord trampled under his foot while he marched on. He took in what was left of a people whose homes had been burnt to the ground and most of their friends and family murdered in a war they had no say in. He took these people far into the mountains, out of reach and out of knowledge, and he cared for them. He did what he could, what he knew how to do, to keep the people healthy and stable. The village is named Shinohari for the Eastern tongue meaning “People of a lost world”.
My mind was honed as finely as my body and both were put through their limits, redefining what those limits were everyday. I began to see in Jukahn what he saw in Junoro. It wasn’t accurate to say he became a father figure but I depended on him to teach me and take care of me while I learned to take care of myself. It explained the motherly look Junoro was always giving Jukahn when they spoke. Eventually I would call him “master” and he called Junoro “mistress”. Through his guidance, I was able to pick up on advanced teachings rather quickly. There was one exception, though.
They say there are three things that make a being. The first is the body which is the physical part. The second is the mind which is the mental that commands the physical. The third is the spirit which gives the energy to make the mental and the physical work. In a time long past, a set of monks in Eastern Embre found a way to extend the energy of the spirit beyond the body. It creates an incredible strain on everything that makes up a being and exists as a secret never meant to be unlocked, but if it is practiced, a creative mind can make miracles of the energy the spirit naturally produces. A titanian, in theory, produces an exuberant amount of energy compared to humans but bringing it out was a feat unto itself. That is what Jukahn spent the better part of our training trying to tap into.
Willing the power that is reserved only for the functionality of your body and mind is not an easy task. I spent many hours high in the mountains, surrounded by no noise save for the serenity of nature. I was humbled by waterfalls and rivers, the calls of birds and beasts, the wind dancing over the tops of trees and the rain falling in torrents only to trickle off leaves before it made it softly to the forest floor. All this time spent trying to find the energy of the soul, bring it out, and hold it in the palm of my hand, outside of my body. The mind is master of the body but the spirit exists like a force of nature, beyond control, and beyond understanding. If it is yours, though, should you not be able to understand it?
The key was in his teachings. I sat on a rock that had no special meaning or significance with my eyes shut and only the wise voice of Jukahn singing symphonies of wisdom into my ears. “Your mind still believes that your body needs all of what your spirit provides. The spirit gives more than enough, but the body demands it all because that is all the body knows. Teach your mind to let go of the needs of the body. Empty yourself of the desire to satisfy the flesh. Become the void, blank so that you may rewrite yourself the way you need to be writ.”
I took in slow breaths and exhaled them patiently a moment later, I was lost within myself. I could see and hear the echoes of the mind playing out every thought, showing me all that was holding me back. The voice of my sister making me promise to find her again, the burning of my home, the call in the night that the king and queen were dead, the look of the man who was reluctant but ready to take the lives of two children for an idea that it was for the greater good. Then I realized that I had nothing beyond that. I didn’t know anything about what befell my home after we had been rescued from it. I never got any news and no one would tell me because they believed it shouldn’t matter to me.
It shouldn’t, really. I should have no concern over the fate of my people because they weren’t my people anymore. I had no responsibility to them because I wasn’t Kael Lione anymore. All the thoughts and memories I had been clinging to, the sense of identity, started to slip away and piece by piece they fell. The voices went quiet and I was left in vast, white nothingness. I stood at the precipice of a new beginning, where one step forward would take me down a countlessly splitting path where before I saw only one path.
I opened my eyes to a glow in front of me. In my hand was the tool I needed to etch my future into the stone of who I was. It was brilliant, burning brighter than any torch, molded into a perfect orb and floating some few inches above my palm. I watched light and shadow dance around it and marveled at what I had created after I had cleared myself. It was a unique kind of focus that brought me here. It was beyond simple concentration. This was avoiding distraction by leaving nothing to distract.
Jukahn broke the silence, asking me the question that I had not had the chance to ask myself. “Who are you?”
“Juik,” I replied, as the name suddenly became mine. Everything that was Kael Lione slipped away and in speaking that name, I became someone else. I was Shinohari, a protector and a merchant of death, whose sword and hands shaped the world to a new design that could be whatever I wished it. I could forge a wondrous dream or an unwaking nightmare.
He asked a second question; one which he already knew the answer to. In calm and steel voice, he asked, “what are you?”
I stared down at the ball of light I had created from nothing and it stared back at me, speaking in whispers and chirps of energy crackling like electricity. Tiny sparks leaped over the smooth surface. This thing came not just from me, but from the emptiness I had created inside of me. A hole I had made so that I had room to be what I needed when it was needed. That is what I was. “The Inane,” I answered, “empty as the void so that I may fill myself blood.”