"Are you out of your mind?" Ruban demanded, glaring at his uncle. They were alone in Subhas's office, Simani having lured Ashwin off to the library to introduce him to her husband and 'show him the treasures of one of the most important monuments in Ragah'. The young nobleman had followed her eagerly enough. "I can't afford to babysit that spoilt little pipsqueak while working this case. He's only going to get in the way and slow us down."
"What will you have me do, Ruban?" his uncle asked, spreading his palms out before him. "We can't allow him to wander around the city unsupervised. You think Washi is done with him? She'll try to lure him back to that damned studio first chance she gets; and if not her, then someone else. The media is practically salivating after him right now. And he knows even more about this mess now than he did an hour ago. We can't possibly risk him talking to anybody else. That boy has the self-control of an impulsive rabbit."
"Well then, why don't you just deport him back to Zaini and get this whole mess over with?"
"Deport him?" Subhas sighed, rather melodramatically, in his nephew's opinion. "And this is why you will never make it in politics, my boy. Whatever your personal opinions of that 'spoilt little pipsqueak', Ashwin Kwan is a high-ranking Zainian delegate to this country, sent here on official business by his government. To top it all, he is a fucking Zainian aristocrat, however insignificant. To deport him would not only be a direct insult to his family – which in itself would be bad enough – but also an unforgiveable slight to his country. We have extensive trade links with the House of Kwan which I cannot afford to jeopardise.
"The Zainians are angry enough already about us keeping the formula secret for so many years. Not to mention, lest it has escaped your notice, dear boy, that the Zainians are the only reason we know about any of this in the first place. We can't afford to antagonise them now and compromise one of the most important sources of intelligence we have permanently," he took a deep breath, as if steadying himself for what was to come next. "Kwan will stay here for as long as he bloody well pleases. And we'll just have to suck it up and make sure he doesn't blow everything up while enjoying our hospitality."
After a few more seconds of glaring defiantly at his uncle, Ruban deflated, sagging back into his chair as if somebody had punched the air out of him. "I can't believe this is actually happening to me."
"Oh stop being such a grumbler, Ruban, it is unbecoming," Subhas said, with an amount of cheer in his voice that struck the other man as entirely unwarranted, considering the situation. "It's not going to be that bad. He's a cute kid."
Ruban still did not know how he had managed to keep himself from growling at that moment; he could distinctly remember wanting to, rather desperately. Still, it wasn't usually a superlative idea to growl at one's boss, even when they weren't simultaneously one's uncle. So he contented himself with throwing the man the dirtiest glare he could muster, before hauling himself to his feet with more aggression than was strictly necessary and making his way to the door with a mumbled goodbye.
"Ruban," his uncle called, just as he was about to slip out of the chamber. He turned, looking questioningly at Subhas. "I mean it, my boy." All traces of humour were gone from his voice, leaving behind a stern seriousness that inspired obeisance. "Keep an eye on that young man at all times. As long as he's here, do not let him out of your sight for longer than necessary. He is a foreigner, and you must never forget it. He might be harmless, but not all his associates are. No information should cross the border that we don't want to send across. Is that clear?"
Ruban dipped his head in a short, decisive nod before the door slid shut behind him and he strode out into the corridor.
***
The library of the IAW really was awe-inspiring, Shwaan would gladly grant them that. Like in the rest of the building, the chambers were old and cavernous, the walls scarred, dented and chipping at the edges from age and the vendettas of centuries past. Shwaan supposed it was fitting that the humans had turned his mother's old armoury into an archive of Aeriel atrocities on mankind, past and present. Because really, to a great extent that was what the library was; its walls covered with shelves reaching the high ceiling, filled with stack upon stack of old leather-bound volumes, treatises and documents. And they all recounted, in painstaking detail, the unending tyrannies and atrocities visited upon humankind by Aeriels over the past centuries, reaching back over a thousand years or more.
Now of course, Shwaan would have no problem with an accurate portrayal of history, however unflattering to his own race. And he was pretty sure that over the last six hundred years or so, the records were fairly accurate, albeit a little exaggerated. But the thing was, Shwaan remembered his grandmother. She had been around for quite a few years after he was born – the good years. Then she had winged it to some faraway island to take up with a strapping young sailor she'd encountered on one of her journeys, leaving her vankrai daughter to manage the throne and casually throwing the world into utter chaos.
And while flighty and impulsive she had definitely been – like most Aeriels – she had most certainly not been anybody's idea of a tyrant. Unless spacing out during court meetings was your idea of tyranny. Neither, so far as he could remember, had he or his sister ever indulged in any village-plundering, farm-burning activities during their time on earth, as asserted by quite a few of the volumes. Not to brag or anything, of course, but Shwaan could distinctly remember that the humans of his time had considered him a singularly cute child. The maids certainly never tired of trying to pull his cheeks and ruffle his wings, much to his youthful indignation.
"My lord." The Hunter named Simani walked up behind him, with a rather lost-looking, bespectacled man with unruly reddish-brown hair in tow. "This is my husband, Vikram," she said, indicating her companion. "Vik, this is Lord Ashwin Kwan from Zaini."
"Just Ashwin, please," Shwaan said automatically, noticing that the newcomer was clutching a large tome entitled 'Aeriel Influences in Pre-Rebellion Architecture' to his chest.
"Hello Ashwin," said the other man, smiling with more genuine friendliness than Shwaan had seen on anyone that day. "Sorry I kept you waiting. I…uh…got a little engrossed." Holding up his book, he gave an embarrassed little laugh.
"A little indeed," said Simani fondly, rolling her eyes.
"Oh no," said Ashwin, reassuringly. "Don't be sorry. Personally, I think roofless galleries were a nifty idea, if a little ahead of their time. They should've waited for water-proofing to get invented before implementing it wholesale in the capital."
Vikram's eyes lit up like a boy whose birthday had come early. "I know right? And the sun-soaking roofs were basically the ancient version of modern solar panels. If only we can recover the lost Aeriel technology, half of our energy issues will be solved overnight! Not that they'd ever grant funds for the research, but I always wondered how they connected the energy absorbents to the interior panelling of the chambers…"
Shwaan was sure he would have said more, if the library doors had not flown open at that moment to admit a very flustered-looking Ruban Kinoh, who marched through the dim, draughty chambers of the library, his coat flaring out behind him, until he reached the trio standing in one of the inner sections. He looked at Simani and the two Hunters seemed to have some kind of unspoken communication between them, Simani's eyes flicking momentarily to Shwaan before she sighed, shaking her head. Ruban was more demonstrative of his displeasure, and threw a glare his way that could have rivalled Safaa's on a good day. "We have to go," he growled, still glowering at Shwaan.
Shwaan had heard of Ruban before he met him, of course. It was impossible not to hear of him if one was spending any time in Vandram, but even more so in Ragah. The Parliament attack – another ridiculous and over-the-top venture orchestrated by his mother – had made the Hunter a household name. From what Shwaan could tell, though, Ruban had been well-known in military and enforcement circles long before any of that, if not so much in civilian ones.
The best Aeriel Hunter in the country, they called him, and if his record was anything to go by, Shwaan knew that the epithet was well deserved. He could feel his wings twitching with something that bordered on anxiety, and tamped down brutally on the urge to stretch them. The human had no way of knowing who he really was, and as long as he didn't, he had no reason to want him dead, no matter how much Ashwin Kwan annoyed him.
Besides, Ruban was a Hunter, and by all reports, an exceptionally good one. It couldn't hurt to get to observe one from such close quarters, just in case he ever needed the experience; though he did of course plan to avoid any conflict with humans so far as possible. Safaa would have his head if he got into any unnecessary squabbles on earth and ruined their reputation even more than their mother already had. Not that Tauheen had left much for him to do in that direction, so far as he could see.
"We need to go," Ruban repeated, jerking his head at the door, a distinct snappishness to his tone.
"You go ahead with Ashwin, Ruban," Simani said with a smile, putting a friendly hand on the other Hunter's shoulder. "Vik and I need to go to the school to pick Sri up. I'll see you at the office in an hour."
Ruban frowned, looking genuinely confused. "Sri has school on Emancipation Day?"
"Well, not school school," Vikram piped up, flailing his hands in a rather futile attempt to explain himself nonverbally. "Like, y'know, the Emancipation Day Parade. It's compulsory, so all the kids have to attend it."
"We dropped him off before we got here," Simani nodded.
Ruban smiled, a faraway look in his eyes. "The Parade," he said, almost in a whisper. "Miki used to be so good at that." The next moment, he seemed to realise what he had done, and the colour drained from his face. Simani looked away, her eyes pained and Vikram seemed suddenly to find the fading patterns on the ragged old library carpet profoundly fascinating.
"We need to go," Ruban snapped for the third time, his voice rough. This time, the command was directed solely at Shwaan. And before he could come up with a response, the Hunter was already halfway across the library, reaching for the door handle. Shwaan ran after him, not wanting to be left behind in the sudden awkwardness of the library.
***
The Hunter Quarter, South Ragah Division, was a rather unassuming affair, considering all the hype that surrounded it. It consisted mainly of a large, square, red-brick structure surrounded by a small yard, with smaller, if more modern-looking extensions scattered around the main building. A large sign over the main doorway announced the nature and purpose of the establishment along with the street name and address. Apart from that, Shwaan could see nothing that distinguished this particular building from the many others like it that he had seen around the neighbourhood on the way over.
Ruban walked into the building through the open doorway and Shwaan followed at a more leisurely pace. He would be lying if he said that walking into a building reputedly full of some of the best Hunters in the city did not fill him with some amount of trepidation, but with it there was also excitement. Excitement at being so close to the beating heart of the anti-Aeriel establishment of Vandram, the core of her famed Hunter Corps; of walking casually into a building he was sure his mother would have given her left wing to be able to infiltrate. He wondered what she would say, if she could see him now.
"Welcome back, boss," said a young man from behind one of the six large teakwood desks scattered around the expansive workspace in no discernible order. The man, who looked to be about twenty-five, was dressed in a heavily embroidered white tunic paired with fitting white trousers. Looking around, Shwaan saw that the two other occupants of the room were also similarly attired in elaborate tunics and matching pants. "Took you long enough." The young man scowled darkly at Ruban. "How come you get to escape those damned speeches when we were stuck trying not to gag on the Transport Minister's atrociously fake Ibantian accent for two whole hours?"
Ruban's answering grin was all teeth. "That'd be 'cause I'm the boss and you're the minion. Got it?"
If the young man 'got it', the only indication of his newfound enlightenment was a dismissive clucking noise accompanied by an eye roll. "Where were you anyway?"
"IAW," said Ruban, moving towards what Shwaan assumed was his own desk in one corner of the room. "Got a call from the Senior Secretary this morning."
"What for?" asked one of the others, a rotund woman of around fifty, her curly brown hair pulled back into a tight bun. Shwaan squinted to make sure he was seeing right. On one side of her desk sat a large grey alley-cat, reclining on the polished wood with half-lidded eyes. At the sound of the woman's voice, it turned lazily around to look at her, greeting her with a languorous yawn and a resounding tail-thump.
Ruban ignored the cat. "Something's come up at SifCo, Hema. Long story. I'll tell you later." He spared a swift sideways glance at Shwaan.
"And who's this, then?" asked the young man who had spoken first, looking Shwaan up and down with open curiosity as if he had just noticed the foreign intruder in their ranks. "Did you swap Simani for a foreigner, boss?" he demanded, feigning shock. "I mean sure, he's cute, but our Simani wasn't bad either. Plus you've got to give the local kids a chance."
"If you threw a sifblade with half the enthusiasm you shoot nonsense, Faiz, you might have had a chance at a promotion this year. Simani's gone to pick Sri up from school. She'll be here in a bit. As for him," he said, indicating Shwaan. "He's Lord Ashwin Kwan from Zaini. He'll be working with us for a while."
The terseness of Ruban's tone seemed to dissuade his colleagues from pursuing the matter any further. Instead, the man named Faiz merely grinned at Shwaan with a glint in his eye. "Hello my lord. I'm Faiz," he said, pointing his thumb at himself rather redundantly. "This," he pointed at the woman with the cat. "Is Hema and that fluffy monstrosity on her desk is Kitty. Very original, I know. And that," he said, indicating a grizzled old man who had so far been sitting quietly at his desk at the opposite end of the room. "Is Dai. He's really old and really fast, so you don't wanna mess with him unless you want your teeth knocked in. Believe me," he said, his tone sagacious. "I speak from experience. Bitter experience. Rinku!" he called, leaning back into his chair and raising his voice. As if on cue, a slim, round-faced young woman with shoulder-length hair pulled back into a ponytail poked her head out of one of the doors at the end of the hall.
"Yes?" she asked, looking expectantly at Faiz.
"That's Rinku, our office assistant," he told Shwaan matter-of-factly, pointing at the woman half-obscured by the door she was leaning out of. "Rinku, this is the boss' new…ah…companion. Lord Ashwin Kwan. Come say hi."
"Oh," said Shwaan, rather overwhelmed by the unexpected deluge of information even as Ruban glared daggers at Faiz. "Please call me Ashwin. And it's very nice to meet all of you." He smiled as sweetly as he could manage.
Faiz dismissed this pleasantry with an unconcerned wave of his hand. "Anyhow, don't let the bossman intimidate you Ashwin. The surliness is just his default setting. It's nothing personal. You'll get used to it. Do come in and take a seat. Don't just stand there," he said, indicating one of the two empty chairs across from his own desk.
"Well," said the man named Dai, once everyone had settled down somewhat. "Whatever the Senior Secretary wanted to say to you, Ruban, it would seem we have a more immediate problem."
"And what's that?"
"There have recently been some Aeriel attacks at the mines in Ghorib. Nothing very serious, but the local Hunters are reluctant to engage because of the volatile nature of the terrain; a blast in the mines could pose a major logistical problem, if nothing else. They have asked for our help, and we'll have to move quickly if we want to prevent the next one."
"What kind of a suicidal Aeriel willingly enters a goddamn sif mine?" asked Faiz with a bewildered frown. "I've never heard of anything like it."
"Well, Aeriels seem to be entering all kinds of places these days," Ruban muttered grimly. "Hema, find me a blueprint of the Ghorib mines, please. Dai, I'll need some more details on these attacks before we can move in. When exactly did each one happen, how many have there been? Talk to the locals and find out everything they know. Faiz, go help Rinku find whatever records we have on Aeriel activity in or near Ghorib in the past decade, and see if any of those Aeriels are currently in the system. We could do with some additional info on the matter. What the hell are Aeriels doing in a sif mine?"
***
"Hey," the girl called Rinku greeted him with a smile. She walked up to Shwaan as he stood near the back of the office, looking at a bulletin board filled with newspaper clippings and grainy photographs which he assumed were of some significance to previous cases worked by the Hunters of the South Ragah Division. He had drifted from the main group when the conversation had shifted from the Ghorib case to the details of one of the cases the Hunters had wrapped up recently. He figured he might as well try and explore the place while he was there. If he was lucky, he might find something that would be of interest to Safaa.
"Hi," Shwaan said with a smile of his own, turning to face the girl. As he spoke, he could see a harried-looking Faiz coming up behind her with a large stack of old, faded files in his hands. Shwaan moved towards the other man. "Here, let me help."
Handing off half of his pile to Shwaan with a sigh of relief, Faiz grumbled: "I'll never understand why we can't just have all this stuff on the goddamn computers like everybody else. Dai's paranoia is gonna be the death of me one day."
"He's only being careful," Rinku said, her tone chiding. "What if the Aeriels got their hands on our records? Who knows what they could do with it." Her dark eyes widened with imagined horror.
"Aeriels ain't magicians Rinku," Faiz said with a snort. "They can't do anything with words on a screen that a human can't. Hell, us puny mortals could probably do it much better than those medieval bastards. All they're really good for is blowing things up. That's why there's so few of 'em left. Comes with the territory when you never fucking die, I suppose. You never really end up learning anything new either. Dumb as bricks, most of 'em are."
"But they're Aeriels," insisted Rinku, as if that simple fact superseded any argument that Faiz could present in favour of digitalising their records. "They can do anything!"
"Well we wouldn't be here if that were true, would we?" said Faiz. "We here are the living, breathing testaments to the fact that Aeriels can't, in fact, do anything. Sure they're strong. But we're stronger. The Founding Fathers did not free the earth of Aeriel tyranny just so that we could live in fear and show our bellies at the first sign of danger. The fight against those bastards is not just physical, it is psychological," he declared.
Entertaining as it was, Shwaan thought he should stop the matter from escalating into a full-blown fight. "That is very true Faiz," he nodded at the young man, trying his best to look impressed. Then, turning to Rinku with a bright smile, he asked in the most charming, heavily accented voice he could muster: "Would you mind showing me around the office, Miss Rinku? Really, it is a most fascinating place. I have never seen anything like it," he widened his eyes dramatically for emphasis. "I'm sure my countrymen would be very impressed with everything the Vandrans have achieved in our never-ending battle against the Aeriels."
The girl's eyes lit up. "Of course, my lord! Our armours are the strongest there are and our sifblades are the sharpest in the world, not just the country," she said proudly. "You've never seen anything like them!"
In that moment, Shwaan was rather fiercely grateful that he hadn't.
***
"And this one," Faiz said, holding up a long blade slightly curved at one end, his eyes shining with righteous pride. "Is used to pin the bastards to one place so that they can't just fly off and throw one last energy-shell at you before they fall over dead. I mean, not many people realise this, but there are different kinds of Aeriels; some easier to kill than others. The stronger ones – those are the ones with the red markings on their wings, y'know – they can survive a couple of stabbings easy. Don't really go down until you've really driven the sif into their system nice and full, sucking every last drop of energy out of their body," he explained with evident satisfaction at the thought of scoring just such a glorious kill. Shwaan, physically incapable of feeling cold, was sure he felt a sudden chill down his spine.
They were standing in one of the smaller cabins built as an extension to the main red-brick structure, close to the backyard. It was full of ominously glinting blades in all shapes and sizes, with all kinds of peculiar quirks and designs that Shwaan would have been perfectly happy never knowing the exact uses of. As it was, he was feeling vaguely nauseated (at least that's what he thought he was feeling. Never having been sick in his life didn't give him much of a frame of reference). He wasn't sure, though, if it was from being surrounded by so much sif or from imagining the various scenarios that Faiz explained in graphic detail, with obvious relish. Beside him, Rinku looked on with wide, awestruck eyes, nodding along to Faiz's explanations with undisguised adoration in her gaze.
Shwaan was trying to think of an excuse to escape the armoury without seeming rude or suspicious, when he was saved the trouble by an emphatic, demanding 'meow' somewhere near his feet. He looked down, surprised, only to see Kitty looking up at him with an expression of annoyed exasperation that would have done his sister proud. "Meow," she elucidated again, with more emotion this time.
"Ah, she likes you," Rinku said, taking her eyes off the blade-wielding Faiz with some reluctance, to focus on the cat.
Shwaan knelt on one knee to pick the animal up into his arms. "Well, at least she has good taste."
Rinku laughed, as did Faiz, seeming to realise that they had been cooped up in the armoury for a long time. "We should head back now," Faiz said, replacing the curved blade on the shelf he had picked it out of.
"Yeah," agreed Rinku, her voice tinged with mild regret. She glanced at the cat curled up happily in Shwaan's arms. "It's time for her lunch anyway."
"Yeah. Besides, I thought I heard Simani come in," Shwaan said, turning back towards the main building with an armful of cat before they could ask him how he knew.
***
Ghorib had, at one time, been a farming village. Although those days were long past, the place retained some vestiges of its agricultural past in the form of quite a few large open fields and a deep aversion to apartment buildings.
The arrival of the mines had brought with it prosperity and pollution; and while the streets and the single-storey houses dotting the expansive landscape were better maintained than those in his hometown of Surai, Ruban could almost feel the dust and grime in the air. It made the air of Ragah feel fresh and clean by comparison.
As the jeep approached the main marketplace, bustling with the last of the Emancipation Day shoppers from Ghorib and the surrounding villages, Simani pressed down lightly on the brakes, slowing the momentum of the vehicle. "Well, we're here. Where to now?" she asked, glancing sideways at Ruban. Behind them, Ashwin sat sprawled on the backseat with a bored expression. Ruban would have left the Zainian behind at the Quarter, but he didn't trust his idiot colleagues not to sit the foreigner down and inundate him with state secrets, just for the heck of it. That idiot Faiz had apparently already given him a guided tour of the goddamn armoury.
"Well, we should go to the local Hunter Quarters first, I suppose," said Ruban. "We can think about where to take it from there, once we have the whole picture."
***
"The first attack happened last week, y'know. All of a sudden like," Bhagat was saying, eyes wide, as he scratched absently at his protruding potbelly. He and his old partner Kash made up the entire staff of the Ghorib Hunter Quarters, a dilapidated little red-brick building tucked behind the main marketplace, looking as though it could collapse at any moment. Well, Ruban supposed a backwater sif-mining village did not often receive visitors of the Aeriel variety. "Right early in the morning, thank the Lord, before work had started for the day. But Aeriels in a goddamn sif mine? Who's ever heard of such a thing?"
"Who indeed," Simani said, nodding sympathetically. "Where did they attack, exactly? What were they trying to get at, do you know?"
"Not the faintest clue ma'am, none." Bhagat shook his head emphatically. "First couple o' times they didn' enter, I don't think. We just found charred rocks and earth near the mines, like the sorts you get after one of their energy blasts, you understand. But yesterday, well, we found Aeriel feathers inside the mines, ma'am. Right in the bowels of a goddamned sif mine! There weren't no signs of a blast or nothing inside, thank the Gods above," he touched his forehead and then his chest in quick succession. "But that's when I said to Kash, y'know. I said to him, man, we've gotta call in the big guns from the capital. 'Cause we'd never seen anything like it, you understand. We don't get Aeriels in these parts. Never seen hide nor hair of one in the six years I've been posted here. And now this. Aeriels in the mines. It's all bloody fishy, I'll tell you that."
"Do you know how many of these Aeriels there are?" asked Ruban.
Bhagat shook his head once again. "Just the one, from what we could tell, sir. But I couldn't say for sure, of course. We never got to see the actual creature, you understand. It all happened way early in the morning, every time. All we saw was what it…uh…left behind."
"Well, why didn't you just post guards around the mines after the first attack?" asked Simani.
Bhagat's eyes widened, as if in disbelief that such an incredible thing should be expected of him. "Why, ain't no guards here as would've gone to the mines in the wee hours to fight demonic sif-eatin' Aeriels, ma'am. The normal things are bad enough. But no Aeriel in its right fuckin' mind would go within a hundred yards of a sif mine. Who knows what we're dealin' with here? Ain't no guard like to risk his soul with omething' like that."
Ruban looked at his partner. Well, there wasn't much one could say to that. "Could you give us a detailed blueprint of the mines, at least? And also a map of the village itself, if that's not too much trouble," he said, turning to Bhagat. "We'll see what we can do."
"Yes, yes of course," said the Hunter, bustling around the single filing cabinet in the Quarter, disturbing ancient-looking documents and folders. "Much obliged we are for your help, sir. Much obliged, I'm sure."
***
The jeep was parked in a small clearing a little ways off the entrance to the mine. The clearing they had chosen was surrounded by tall bushes and shrubbery, obscuring the vehicle from view, especially in the dim light of the early morning, with the sun just breaking shyly out of the horizon. Beside him, Simani sat on the passenger seat, looking out towards the mines through a pair of binoculars. It was around four in the morning and his partner had determinedly ignored any suggestions that she drive them from the motel where they had put up for the night, to the location of the anticipated crime.
Ruban rubbed his eyes tiredly. He needed more sleep and a lot more caffeine. And the universe seemed determined to deprive him of both.
"But you did this the last time as well," Ashwin whined from the backseat, making Ruban want to bang his own head against the steering wheel. "You can't just keep leaving me behind all the time!"
"In fact, my lord," said Ruban, his teeth gritted against the urge to punch some sense into the younger man. "I plan to do just that. It was hard enough to get information from that half-wit Bhagat anyway. The last thing we needed was for him to see you and freak the hell out even more. He'd probably have mistaken you for the king of Zaini and thrown you an impromptu party."
"While that is far from an unpleasant prospect," said Ashwin in a put-upon voice that made Ruban's blood boil. "I don't see why that means I can't go with you now. After all, it is part of my mission to help you apprehend these evil Aeriels. So why can't I go with you?"
"Because," enunciated Ruban, in a voice full of patience he did not feel. "While you dying a bloody and painful death in the bowels of a mine in a backwater Vandran village would make little difference to me personally, it might cause some minor embarrassment to my superiors. Hence, I would rather we avoid that eventuality as long as possible."
"I see it," said Simani, interrupting their discourse, her voice urgent. "I see its wings. Ruban, the Aeriel's here." She was already stepping out of the jeep before Ruban could properly register her words.
"Stay here," Ruban growled at Ashwin, before slamming his door shut and running to catch up with his partner.
***
A shot rang out, echoing in the near-complete silence of the overgrown fields. Simani holstered her gun and began to move closer to the mines, Ruban in tow.
Not that a gunshot would make much of a difference to an Aeriel, but it had distracted the thing from entering the mines, drawing its attention to the approaching Hunters. Ruban counted that as a win. They would have a much easier time dodging the energy-attacks out in the open than within the claustrophobic confines of the mine.
Simani cleared the shrubbery moments before Ruban, drawing her sifblade into her right hand and clutching the gun in her left. Ruban saw the exact moment the Aeriel caught sight of her. Its hellish eyes flashed silver in the reflected light of the rising sun, its gigantic silver wings pulling back into a high arc, readying for attack. Ruban took a moment to thank whoever was listening that this one didn't have the dreaded crimson markings on its wings. It was not that he didn't relish a good fight as much as the next Hunter, but he wasn't comfortable fighting an X-class in an area surrounded by civilians. The stakes were too high to risk it.
In the next moment, the Aeriel was charging at Simani with an enraged snarl. Her bullet had hit it in one of the wings. It wouldn't cause any lasting damage; nothing would, except for sif. But Aeriels didn't like to have their wings messed with.
Simani dodged the charging Aeriel easily with a smooth leap off to the right, giving Ruban the opening he needed to bring his sifblade down in a forceful arc to slash at the creature's face. The Aeriel drew back, taken by surprise. The blade connected, tearing at the creature's skin and causing a blinding sliver of light to flash out of the injured skin like blood pouring from a wound. A moment later, the light subsided, leaving just the ear-splitting howl of the Aeriel as evidence of their small victory.
It didn't last long. The Aeriel lashed out blindly, angrily at Ruban, its flailing hand connecting with his chest. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back a few feet from where he had just been standing. His abdomen felt as though it were on fire.
Civilians often believed that the deadly energy-attacks were the most dangerous thing about an Aeriel. And perhaps they were, when it came to largescale terrorist attacks on mass targets. But in close combat, far more problematic than an energy blast was the sheer physical strength of an Aeriel, their agility and endurance. Most Aeriels – apart from the rare X-class – couldn't throw more than a couple energy-shells in a day anyway, and it wasn't the most precise of weapons, making it easy to dodge if one kept one's wits in the face of a massive fireball flying towards them.
Even with no energy-shells, however, it took at least three to four fully armed Hunters to take down a single unarmed Aeriel. Only a very few of the most skilled and experienced Hunters were allowed to Hunt in pairs, instead of the traditional teams of four.
He looked up to see Simani launch herself at the Aeriel, firing a shot a little off the creature's right wing to distract it. The shot was never meant to hit its target, but it got the Aeriel to move instinctively leftwards in a bid to avoid another bullet to its wing. There, Simani's right hand shot out at lightning speed, slashing viciously at the Aeriel's exposed left wing with her sifblade. Once again, blinding light issued from the spot where the sifblade had touched the Aeriel's skin, and the creature let out another ear-splitting scream, flying away and backwards. Simani followed it, firing two shots right at the creature's chest as she tried to get close enough for another strike with her blade.
Ruban felt it before he saw it, the familiar prickling sensation as the air around them heated up with gathering energy. The Aeriel flew up and out of Simani's reach, flapping its injured wing desperately to propel itself upward and farther away from its opponent. It needed distance for the momentum to build, Ruban realised, as he saw the first vestiges of an energy-shell forming in the Aeriel's outstretched palm, a tiny dot of light that kept getting bigger and bigger until, within moments, it was the size of a small tennis ball.
"Sim!" he shouted, but his partner had already realised what was happening. Against every instinct in Ruban's body telling him to make her run away from the inevitable blast, Simani stood perfectly still, as if petrified by the oncoming attack.
Then, as the Aeriel launched the smouldering ball of pure, fiery energy at her, Simani threw herself sideways with all her might, her body shooting out of the range of the attack just as the energy-shell flew harmlessly past the spot she had been standing in moments ago. Had she moved a moment earlier, the Aeriel would have had the time to change the direction of the attack, and the shell would have connected with its victim, obliterating her in a matter of seconds.
The deafening sound of an explosion buzzed in Ruban's ear as the shell connected with some inanimate target in the distance and went off, flooding the area with sudden, blinding light for a few seconds.
Even as the Aeriel lost momentum and altitude in its moment of exhaustion after the blast, Ruban gripped his sifblade, and raising his hand in an arc over his head, threw the weapon with all the strength and accuracy he could muster at the Aeriel. The creature had its attention fixed on Simani, who was just recovering from her bruising leap, and did not notice the blade until it was too late.
It connected. The sifblade struck its target right in the throat, lodging itself firmly in the silvery flesh as the Aeriel writhed and convulsed, trying to throw the weapon off its body. The creature collapsed to the floor, its silver hair pooling in the ground as light flooded from its injured throat. Seizing the opportunity, Simani leapt forward and drove her own blade through the writhing Aeriel's heart. For a moment, the creature remained stock still, moving not a muscle as two sifblades drew blinding light from its body. Then it fell back, dead.
Ruban jumped back to his feet and ran towards his partner, anxious to check on her and retrieve his sifblade. Even without an immediate threat in the vicinity, he felt vulnerable without it.
Barely a moment before he reached her, silver flashed in the corner of his eye, and Simani was lifted into the air and thrown with crushing force across the field. She landed with a resounding crash, her prone form bouncing painfully against the mine wall before landing in an unconscious heap onto the grimy floor. Her sifblade clattered to the ground along with her gun.
***
Damn it! Ruban thought, as he stood in front of an unconscious Simani with his back to her, staring at the new Aeriel. Damn it all to hell. He should have known there would be more than one. How could he have been so damn careless? His sifblade was still stuck in the dead Aeriel's throat, utterly useless, and all he had was a gun.
Guns were good as a distraction technique with Aeriels, as long as you had sif to back it up with. But without that, it would just be a minor annoyance to the Aeriel, and the creature looked annoyed enough as it was, glaring down at the lifeless body of its comrade before looking back up at the Hunters with pure, unadulterated fury. This one looked like a male, Ruban thought deliriously; not that one could always tell with Aeriels. As he watched, it raised its pale, almost translucent hand, palm facing Ruban, and he could see the tiny pinprick of light beginning to take shape in the air around the Aeriel's skin.
If he were to dodge the shell, it would hit Simani directly, and there was no way in hell she would survive that. If he remained where he was, however, and took the brunt of the attack, she might just escape with a few shattered bones and lots of bruising. The surviving Aeriel would probably be satisfied with both the Hunters down and proceed with whatever task it had come here to accomplish in the first place. Aeriels were not known to be sticklers for detail, one of the few advantages humans had over them.
To Ruban's mind, it was not a choice at all. Simani was his subordinate, his responsibility. He should have anticipated the presence of more than one Aeriel. That he had not foreseen this was his fault, a flaw in his planning. It was his goddamn job to anticipate the enemy's next move, his only job, and he had failed at it; failed spectacularly at that. There was no reason whatsoever why Simani should pay for his stupidity.
Ruban squared his shoulders and spread his legs a little farther apart, trying to cover as much of Simani's body as he could before the shell finally hit. The more of the impact he could take, the less injury his partner would sustain. As he watched, the ball of light grew larger, and Ruban prayed silently to anybody who was listening that Simani might get out of this alive.
Just as the Aeriel was about to throw the shell at the Hunters, however, a dizzying blur of black and grey launched itself at the creature, knocking it off balance. This caused the energy-shell to fly off at an angle, missing its targets by a wide margin.
For a moment, Ruban stood stock still, half blinded by the light from the misfired shell and completely unable to process what was going on. As his vision cleared and his mind kicked itself back into action, though, he realised in a heart-stopping moment that their saviour was none other than the whiner extraordinaire, Lord Ashwin Kwan.
His braid flew in the air behind him and his grey frock-coat fluttered around his lithe form, giving Ruban the faint impression of wings propelling his body forward, as he arched gracefully in the air, his foot connecting with the Aeriel's jaw in a resounding crack. The stunned creature flared its wings, flying up into the air as Ashwin landed with undiminished poise, straightening. He looked up at his opponent almost casually, as if waiting for it to come down and play with him again.
Ruban had to forcibly suppress the urge to yell at the man to get back into the goddamn car! But just at that moment, his eyes caught a glint of sunlight reflected on metal, and he saw his sifblade, protruding out of the dead Aeriel's throat a little ways to the left of where he stood. Moving as quietly and carefully as he could, he crept towards the weapon even as the Aeriel descended on Ashwin with an enraged snarl, drawing its arm back for what Ruban could tell would be a forceful strike.
Before the arm could connect with his skin, however, Ashwin jumped, flipping mid-air to land a solid kick against the Aeriel's skull. Before the latter could recover, he reached out a hand to grab onto the tails of the Aeriel's feather-cloak to keep himself in the air and drove the side of his palm sharply into its exposed throat, even as the creature flailed to dislodge him.
Despite its disorientation, the Aeriel managed to catch the Zainian's attacking arm in one of its hands at the last moment, trying to twist it mid-air and throw him off. Ashwin responded by bringing his left leg up in a swinging arc at the Aeriel's throat, in an attempt to accomplish what the hand had failed to do. This too, the Aeriel managed to catch with its other hand, smirking triumphantly at the sight of the boy dangling awkwardly in the air, his limbs caught painfully in the creature's death-grip.
This turned out to be a temporary relief for the Aeriel, however. With both the creature's hands now occupied, Ruban finally saw what Ashwin had been meaning to do all along. Pulling his right leg back as far as it would go and using the Aeriel's own hold on him as leverage, Ashwin aimed one final, crushing kick at the creature's throat. With both its hands occupied in holding its opponent in place, there was nothing the Aeriel could have done to stop the inevitable. The kick connected with a resounding crack, almost breaking the creature's neck, and causing it to lose its hold over Ashwin. As the Aeriel staggered back through the air, flapping its wings desperately to keep from toppling to the ground, Ashwin finally let go of its cloak and landed on the ground with his customary grace.
Seeing an opening, Ruban threw his recovered blade at the disoriented Aeriel, this time striking an outstretched wing. The blade tore clean through the appendage and came out the other end, losing momentum and falling to the ground with a thud. The Aeriel's wing spilled light in all directions as the creature collapsed, writhing in pain.
Before Ruban could move, however, Ashwin had the blade in his hand, his body shaking slightly as he stood over the fallen Aeriel. "You don't deserve it," he was saying to the dying creature, so quietly Ruban almost couldn't hear him. He strained his ears, moving closer to the duo. "But I'm going to end it for you quickly. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy," he murmured, sparing a quick glance at the Aeriel's tattered wing, before burying the sifblade hilt-deep into the creature's chest. "And you're far from it."
For a moment, light from the stab wound obscured the Zainian's form, and Ruban thought he saw the afterimage of wings where Ashwin stood.
Then everything was quiet once more.
***
Pressing an ice-pack to his already-bruising chest, Ruban sat beside an unconscious Simani in the ambulance taking them back to Ragah. Half her face was obscured by an oxygen mask, but he could already see colour flooding back into her formerly pale cheeks. Her breast rose and fell rhythmically with unobstructed breaths. She was recovering.
Ruban closed his eyes, leaning back slowly into his seat, trying to find a position that didn't further distress his tortured muscles. "How did you do it?" he asked the young man sitting across from him in the back of the ambulance.
"Do what?" asked Ashwin, his eyes wide and guileless, as if torn out of some private reverie by Ruban's question.
"Beat that Aeriel. How did you know how to fight it?"
"I didn't beat him," said Ashwin, looking genuinely surprised. "You did. I couldn't have done shit without the blade you threw at him."
"Him?" repeated Ruban, raising an eyebrow.
Ashwin shrugged. "Dunno. It looked like a 'him' to me. I could be wrong."
"Don't play games with me, my lord," Ruban snapped. He was too tired for this right now. "Where did you learn to fight like that?"
"Ah," said Ashwin, with a slight smile. "That's a tale for another time."
Before he could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, Ruban felt himself being dragged under by the blissful oblivion of sleep.
***