Kenta had been a guard for the old chief for many years, and his aptitude meant that when the new chief installed new management into the whole tribe, he had merely stayed in the same position.
The winds had always loved Kenta, they whispered little secrets to him, telling him stories of everything that happened in their domain. Before he had gained his gift, many people in the tribe had just called him crazy, and a looney. But then he started being able to hear everything that happened beneath the wind, and he knew their secrets.
Once he knew their secrets, no one wanted to call him crazy anymore. Instead, they shifted towards assassination plots, but those were just as seen by the wind.
The tribe had been a terrifying place before the new chief had quelled all the rabble rousers, but Kenta had been able to survive because he was quick witted and because he knew everything important happening in the tribe.
This new quest to find some artifact had been a bust in his opinion, since the winds down here were old and refused to tell him their secrets. But he knew it would just take time for the old wind to warm up to him. Or it would get replaced with new, fresher wind from the surface.
He liked the guarding duty though, since his job was basically done for him by the wind, and he got to keep everyone as safe as possible. It helped assuage all the guilt he felt from all the assassinations he had done back in the old chief’s rule to keep his position within the tribe strong.
So, Kenta stood in a little corner of the castle they had been excavating, listening to the secrets that the wind told him about the invaders.
A skirmish had taken place in some abandoned corner of the castle. The invaders had wiped the floor with the skeleton crew that ran that side of the castle, but that was okay. Many of the more powerful tribesman were going to throw a welcoming party for them. All Kenta had to do was let them know when they were about to crash through the last wall and enter the trap zone.
They were close, and Kenta could almost feel the anticipation in the wind. His tribesmen were filled with anxiety, while the invaders were filled with cheer. But they would know fear, this next battle would show these invaders what the tribe was truly capable of.
Time passed slowly as the air around Kenta swirled and spoke to him. But after what felt like an eternity, Kenta let out a holler. The new battle would be starting, and the heavy hitters were in the room and ready to attack.
The new chief was the only person truly missing from their crew, he was spending all his time creating as many sins as he could. Their numbers had been drastically cut by the losses at the battle headed by Tera and the recent skirmish.
In one corner sat Tera. She was fiddling with her little stones with a predatory grin on her face. After her devastating loss, she had spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with a new way to attack her enemies, and she had been desperate to try it out.
An old man sat nearby Tera; he was carving little statues out of stone. The man was named Gerard, or at least that was what he said. Other than the old crone who could see some of the future, he was the eldest member of the tribe. The hall they had chosen for this ambush was completely filled with some of his larger statues. He hadn’t pulled everything out of his personal vault of art, but he was dedicating a large amount of it to this battle.
The final member of the deadly trio was a middle-aged woman named Marge. She was an oddity in the tribes, instead of pale skin, hair, and eyes, she had been born as the natural opposite. Her hair was black as night, her eyes were such a rich brown that ate the light out of the air around her, and even her skin was dark.
At a young age she had been ostracized for her appearance, but the seer had told everyone that it was a sign. She would be the opposite that the tribe needed, a darkness that makes the light shine brighter. When Marge received her gift, she became the strongest pyrokinetic the tribe had ever seen. Anyone who could create fire was well-respected and well cared for within the tribe, but she had an overwhelming talent and power. Fire moved and her beck and call.
A somber mood filled the room. Their cannon fodder was going to be the rest of the sins that had been kept for manual labor, but their true heavy hitters were Marge, Gerard, and Tera. A few other minor members of the tribe stood with Kenta, but they were going to act mainly as support for the group.
The wind gave one final sigh as the calm before the storm. A single breath by the world that Kenta could hear. A collective sigh of resignation, the fight was about to begin.
Kenta breathed out his own sigh, letting the wind carry his breath to everyone else. They heard a whisper tell them that it was about to begin. Shoulders tensed and eyes hardened. No one spoke as they waited for the other shoe to drop.
The wind screamed; the wind was crying. And Kenta saw the wall in front of them be cut in half and collapse.
The sins immediately entered the fray, trying to plug the hole in the wall with their bodies. A similar mass of figures in black, featureless garments went to match the inky black tide of monsters. The figures moved with beautiful precision, and incredible teamwork. Using their skills to try and overcome the inherent power of the monsters. Blades clashed with claws, teeth and fists met. Blood and ink fell on the ground, dyeing it a crimson shade.
Tera immediately threw her stones out into the crowd and started teleporting to and fro between them. She didn’t attack anyone, but anyone that came close enough to one of the stones was promptly grabbed and teleported off the battlefield. Wherever she was taking them was far away since the wind couldn’t tell Kenta where they were.
Gerard started throwing his little sculptures into the crowds. Whenever a sculpture broke, it exploded.
At one point in time, one of the smarter members of the clan tried to make a formula for how explosive one of the sculptures would end up being. It was exponentially proportional to the amount of time and effort put into it. That person theorized that if Gerard ever made a true masterpiece and dedicated a decade to its creation, he would be able to blow up the entirety of the Frozen Continent.
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But none of that truly influenced Kenta currently, he just felt the wind move around in beautiful bursts of motion, created by the explosions.
The final member of the terrible three, Marge, started conjuring a massive fireball above her head. But someone in the prince’s line opened her mouth and the fire started moving away from the fireball and started being consumed by the woman. Marge scoffed at the opposing woman’s action.
Spears of flame started burning themselves into existence around Marge, before launching themselves at the fire eating woman. The woman tried to resist and many of her allies blocked spears from hurting her, but all it took was one to get past the lines of defense and skewer the opposing person who had been gifted by Fire.
The fire didn’t truly act like fire, it had a kinetic property that broke all the common sense that surrounded how fire should act. Marge should have been able to light fires and throw fireballs, not create physical constructs out of an immaterial substance. And yet her gift from Fire was so overwhelming that it broke beyond the limits supposedly put on fire. Fire became whatever she needed it to be.
The three heavy hitters were plowing through the enemy lines, and Kenta was pleased at how the operation was going. He listened to the wind, and asked it questions about who was most important on the enemy side.
The wind told him of four important areas on the enemy’s side. The most important was the older man with a sword. He was the one who had made the wind scream earlier, he was able to hurt the wind, therefore Kenta put him as the most dangerous member of the enemy group. He was currently cutting through the sins like they were barely there. Hopefully the mass of bodies would slow him down enough for the big three to engage him. Just in case, Kenta told some of the kinder winds to throw themselves at him to keep him off balance and cut him if he seemed distracted enough.
The next most important person was an unassuming man who stood near the back of the group. He would point at an enemy and suddenly they would start having trouble walking, he was ruining all the effort put into the tribe’s formations and plans, simply by pointing at them. But he seemed unable to affect the sins and needed a small contingent of people around him to defend against the mindless mob. Kenta assumed he had some powerful gift, but highly situational, and for some reason the sins were unaffected while all the people were. Kenta let the winds whisper his theories to his allies, they told them to stay vigilant of the man.
The oddest and most exciting place of interest was a group of three people. They had started near the back of the charge, now they were slowly inching their way towards Marge. Apparently, they had not liked watching her fire skewers into the people around them. None of them seemed particularly strong, and yet a path seemed to open for them. The fighting near them would slowly part as if they were all in some sort of play, and these were the main characters. Kenta let the winds tell Marge of the three people stalking her. She nodded and started throwing fireballs at them.
The last important figure on the battlefield was by far the most interesting. He was not the strongest person fighting, neither was he a tactician sitting in the rear commanding the troops. He was simply one man who changed the tide of battle through sheer skill and competence. He was obviously labeled as the leader in Kenta’s mind. The young man had shining hair and eyes that would’ve fit in with the tribes and he carried himself like the chief of a different age.
Kenta labeled the man as a leader. Everyone listened to him, and everyone benefited from his guidance and assistance. Unlike the command of the previous chief or his subordinates, this man did not simply use overwhelming force to solve the problems. Instead, his skill and mind allowed him to push his own troops to overcome their limits and just barely edge out a victory. He was dangerous, and Kenta sent a wisp of air to tell Tera to remove this man from the battlefield.
The wind eventually found Tera within the mass of violence. It was hard to find a teleporting woman, but the wind slowly wound its way to her. Twisting and turning through it all, until it whispered what Kenta had found.
Kenta saw Tera’s eyes narrow as she considered her approach to whisk the young man away. Obviously if they could capture the man in charge of this invasion, they could make him stop the whole thing.
So, she bided her time.
The young man in question had been observing the whole battle and coming up with strategies to combat them. He had sicked the group of three onto Marge early on in their battles, and with ice and some odd magic, she was being kept under control.
Shoes were flying around the battlefield and capturing Gerard’s constructs before they could break and explode. Kenta made a note through the wind for everyone to take their shoes off, the man in the back who had a fierce look of concentration on his face was controlling people’s shoes while they were still on their feet. Of course, it gave the man more shoes to use, but the tribesman would be unhampered in their movement from that point onward.
Many reluctant faces were made, but everyone trusted Kenta’s intuition. The tribesman each took off their shoes before continuing to battle in the fray.
But most importantly, the young man had figured out that Tera could only teleport to one of her little stones. So, he started having his minions crush the stones underfoot whenever they had the chance. Tera didn’t have many stones to spare, and Kenta heard the wind tell him that tears were rolling down her cheeks, as what was essentially her life’s work was stomped underfoot.
Patiently, the pieces fell into place, and the wind informed Kenta that the leader himself was next to one of Tera’s stones, preparing to smash it underfoot.
In a gust of wind, Tera appeared next to the man and grabbed him before disappearing in a similar manner.
Tera didn’t reappear in the battlefield. Kenta hoped she had taken him to the chief, or the prison, or anywhere that forced this fighting to stop. But after a few bated breaths, Tera did not reappear.
That was when the older man got serious. His blade had been cutting through the sins like a hot knife through butter, but when he saw the prince disappear his eyes narrowed. The wind told Kenta that he took a few steps back to give himself distance from everything.
The sheathed sword went over his head. Then in one fluid motion, he made one singular strike. The wind screamed into Kenta’s ears and his vision started to black out. Never had he heard the wind scream that way.
As his vision came back, Kenta saw that lines of sins had been cut in half. The walls of bodies had fallen to the ground and started leaking black fluid.
The wind was crying to Kenta, and he cried with it. All the information he was spreading to his allies stopped for a moment, and people started falling to blades. Without his knowledge of the state of the battlefield the tribesmen just couldn’t keep up with the invaders. But Kenta couldn’t care about that. He was mourning the wind.
That man with the sword had cut the wind. His blade didn’t brush it aside, or plow through it, it had physically cut the wind in the area around the blade. It had created a rend in the air, then the wind was forcibly moved to fill that gap in the space. The sudden fluctuation in the wind created something that resembled a blade of wind that cut through the man’s enemies.
Kenta cried at the monstrous power of the man, his blade reaped lives on the battlefield; he was drenched in blood and the blacky ink that passed for the blood of the sins.
He cut his way through, cutting anyone that got in his path.
He severed the world around him and as the man approached Kenta, Kenta went to his knees and wept. This man was the end, he was the finality of Kenta’s story. As Kenta’s head hit the floor, the wind whispered a final word.
“Goodbye.”