Shadow Fighter : Legend of Reya

Reya stalked her kill. She could just about see it through the leaves and branches intertwined in front of her. Two Rykers, four-legged beasts with two sets of slit eyes and a sharp nose, were in the clearing below her. The Ryker cub tore away the gut from a moon deer, its white hide coming away easily in its dagger-like teeth. The other Ryker, the other much bigger one to be exact, prowled the clearing, striding around its cub.

And…

And there was a strange-looking flower right next to Reya. She looked at it, amazed by its multicoloured petals. I mean, a flower-like that would be at the very least five silver coins. Maybe more if it had shadow magic in it. And if—

Thorn nudged Reya, nibbling at the patched up and sewn rags she called clothes. Thorn was a wolf with a brilliant white coat and yellow, near golden eyes. Reya's only friend, to be exact. She was big, her head reaching Reya's chest when she stood up. Or maybe Reya was just a little short, but it didn't matter, because short meant agile, and you had to be when you're hunting a Ryker.

"Okay, okay," she muttered, shoving Thorn away. "I'm concentrating."

Thorn blinked her disapproval.

With a strip of white cloth, Reya tied back her red hair. She slid out her dagger–it was short and made of jagged black metal; the handle wrapped in Ryker leather. She didn't have money to get anything sharper or cooler, but hey, she worked with what she had, and often it went well.

Just like how it had to be today.

Thorn jabbed her nose at the smaller Ryker, still gnawing at the deer's insides. The message was clear: I'll go for the smaller one, and you go for the larger, scarier one. Which was frustrating, because Thorn was the one to hunt the larger kills. But ever since Reya was young, Thorn had taught her it doesn't work like that. Especially because Reya was the one to drag Thorn up from her ever-increasing naps to go and hunt.

Reya nodded, and Thorn darted into the thick green brush.

Before doing the same, Reya kissed the pendant hanging from her neck–a purple and blue stone on a leather lace–and tucked it away. Today was a big day, and she needed the money she'd get from killing the Ryker. From its meat, its skin, and maybe even its claws.

That was if she wouldn't get killed by it. She had enough scars from those beasts lining her arms.

And positive thinking was the way to go.

Reya darted into the brush, running on the jungle's tree trunk riddled floor. Over a small boulder, leaping from another larger boulder and grabbing hold of a vine. She scaled the tree, using the vines as holds. She could see the bigger Ryker from up here, still circling. Though its tail was flicking now, spitting acid that sizzled and made the flourishing green grass blacken and sizzle.

It knew something was close, and it was right. Reya came to a stop halfway up the towering Barboa tree, taking care to avoid the mushrooms growing on its trunk. They were deadly–even a touch of them would fill your mouth with foam and make you choke on a swollen tongue. At least, that's what Reya thought. They tasted terrible, though, like licking the bottom of a fieldworker's foot.

She shimmied along a thick branch, careful not to sway the tree, carefully watching the Ryker slow down its prowl and hunch down. She saw a flash of white as Thorn zipped in the knot of bushes, alerting the bigger Ryker.

The smaller Ryker did not move despite its mother's growl. It kept eating, eagerly shredding the deer's skin for apparently no other reason than to enjoy the sound of it. It's wet, gristly rip.

Reya fought a shiver.

She unslung her bow – it wasn't anything like those golden bows she'd seen in the higher end of Caelum's market. It was simply a branch that could bend a little and the dried and tree sap treated intestines of a rock snake formed into a bow. It worked, and that was the important part.

Sometimes.

She straddled the branch, crossing her feet as they came together, and aimed at the larger Ryker. She shut one eye and took a deep breath, forcing her hands to steady as the arrow's point stared down the back of the larger Ryker – the spikes running down its back trembling.

She slowly breathed out, calming her heartbeat.

One.

Reya drew back the arrow.

Two.

Thorn crouched, her eyes like daggers, and directed at the smaller Ryker.

Three.

Reya let go, and the arrow… missed. With a loud thud, it impaled the log next to the larger Ryker. In a flash, it reared and howled, snapping its attention to Reya. Thorn shot out of the bushes, taking advantage of the cub's mother's distraction. The wolf snapped down on the cub's neck, instantly breaking it with an all too loud crunch. With that, Thorn disappeared in a flash, cutting a white line through the gloomy forest.

Reya, however, was stuck. Not to the tree, but because the Ryker was climbing the tree, howling and raging, its claws shredding bark as it leapt up and up. Reya slung her bow over her shoulder and ran across the branch, cursing as the Ryker leapt onto it.

I really need another bow! Reya thought, as she jumped off the branch and caught a vine, swinging to a nearby tree. She slammed into its trunk, gasping for air as she gripped onto another vine. But this one let go, snapping and sending her sprawling and falling. She tried to make sense of the tumbling world, tried to grab onto something, anything, but the spinning world and earth and sky disorientated her.

She landed hard on another branch, knocking the wind out of her lungs. She wheezed, shaking her head as she compelled her arms to straighten.

"My head," she groaned, putting a hand to her temple and shaking it. "A soft branch would be nice once in a while."

A shrieking howl came from above her as the Ryker fell through the air, its claws extended and mouth dislocated to show off its two rows of razor-sharp teeth.

Without a thought, Reya leapt off the branch. Luckily, she was close enough to the ground. She braced herself and landed with a roll, standing back up and springing forward. The ground shuddered as the Ryker landed as well, barely taking a second to right itself and chased after her.

The forest was a blurring tunnel as Reya sprinted, diving underneath hanging vines and jumping from boulders and eaten away ruins. Trees towered above her, shutting off a sharp escape to her right. But, and this would probably kill her, they offered a way up.

She could get the Ryker like that.

Reya could practically feel it breathing down her neck.

She spotted a pair of trees reasonably close together, but neither with vines. She leapt onto the right tree, and then the left, using them as platforms to rise to their shrouded damp and dark canopy. And like she guessed, the Ryker followed the same pattern. She broke through the canopy as if she were breaking a lake's surface, gulping in air as she sprung onto the top branches. The sun hurt her one blue and one grey eye, making her wince and pause.

A pause she didn't have.

The Ryker barreled into her, sending her flying as it came from underneath.

She righted in the air, flipping, and landed with a stumble on a thick branch protruding from the canopy like an outstretched arm. She latched a hand onto a vine and brought out her dagger, putting it in her mouth as she yanked at the vine with both hands.

The Ryker ran straight towards her.

Reya pulled and pulled, forcing one end of the vine to come loose with a sharp snap from the tree.

The Ryker leapt, blocking out the sun.

Reya clung onto the vine, prayed to the gods that something would finally go her way, and dropped down from the canopy. She felt more than heard the slam as the Ryker hit the branch, shuddering the entire tree – shaking loose bronze leaves that danced in the air and down to the forest floor.

She swung to the next tree, and taking the few seconds the Ryker would be dazed from, she raked her dagger across the vine. Reya thinned it until it was at its finest, and when she was satisfied, she hurriedly tied it to the branch above her. In a way, it looked like the hammock she had back in her treehouse.

But this… this was much more dangerous.

Reya called, "Hey, I'm down here!" She heard its howl, and she jumped down, scaling the branches and finally to the forest floor. She saw its yellow eyes pierce the darkness above her, shining deadly hate brighter than the sun's harsh rays.

And just like always, the Ryker followed.

Straight into the sharpened vine.

Reya didn't dare look at what happened next – instead, she groaned and heaved a boulder into the spot the Ryker's body would slam into. But looking away did nothing to gloss away the splatter of blood that freckled her cheeks and the grey stone.

The body smashed into the rock, its ribs crunching. Its spine snapped on impact with a jarring crack.

Reya, panting, grinned. But first, before she could gut it, Reya tentatively approached the Ryker and placed a hand on its bloody and mangled forehead. "Mother Yiva, pass its soul onto the afterworld peacefully." With that, she took out her dagger and set to work.

Sometime in between slitting open its stomach and separating and sorting its meat, Thorn came back. She still had the Ryker cub in her maw, now dripping with saliva and blood, and yet none of it stained her pristine fur.

"You know," Reya grunted as she tore free its thigh muscle and dumped it into her leather satchel, "I could have used your help."

Thorn blinked.

"But," she said as she slit through the fat of… no, not fat, a womb. It was pregnant with another. Reya said another prayer, this time for forgiveness. "I'm smarter than it, so I guess it was easy enough."

Thorn snorted.

"Hey," she said. "I am. I'm the smartest thing in this forest." She was the only other human in this forest.

Reya stood up, the Ryker nothing but blood-stained bone, intestines, and an unborn baby now – all of it a gory site on the boulder and surrounding grass. She had its skin and meat in her soaking satchel. The Ryker had gotten its revenge in a way by splattering her arms with blood, as well as her forehead when she'd wiped away sweat.

But again, it didn't matter. She had meat to sell, and she'd get coin from it.

Enough coin to get an acceptance letter into the Jade Dragon Temple.

Glee filled her gut as she began walking through the forest alongside Thorn, her arms behind her head and her eyes stuck to the sky. The sky blotched by the trees, only letting in a few stray pinpricks of light. There was a chance now. She'd worked years to get a thousand gold coins. A thousand! She could buy so, so many salt-river slug sticks. The roasted kind. Oh, those would be great right about now. But she had to focus on her larger goal. Once she got into the Jade Temple, she'd get a wage.

Would she?

She couldn't remember, but she was sure of it. All the disciples in the Temple were always clean and bought nice smelling food, so they must be paid something, right?

Or they were all rich, which Reya defiantly wasn't.

The forest's suffocating darkness fluttered and fell away, letting go of Reya ad letting her walk into Caelum. It was the small, poorer housing first. The kids playing on the cobbles and kicking around balls of tightly woven cloth, danced around Reya, wrinkling their noses as they got a whiff of her. The elders and parents who sat on porches, smoking out of pots and in reasonably clean Kimonos, gave her dirty looks.

Which Reya found… uncomfortable. She kept her chin up, though, her hands behind her head, and a smile on her face. Yeah, she was a little different – her hair was a red mess running down her back and choppy with small white river shells woven through it and the like. She didn't have a Kimono, she only had dirty loose trousers and a t-shirt that stopped short of her arms. Apart from that, it was just her bloody satchel, her pendant, and her dagger hanging on her hip.

But… this confidence was as thin as her satchel was. She was only pretending to be proud because deep down she hated the stares and mutters she got from the others. And it would only get worse as she stepped deeper into Caelum. Off the grey cobbles and onto the pristine white cobbles, where men and women in gleaming silver armour, where Ronin and their beautiful katanas, wearing sleek black and red Kimonos, and Geishas, all mingled.

Her stomach swam as she got deeper into Caelum. Passing by the bakery with its sweet-smelling buns that made her mouth water, passed the old men gambling with enough money to put to shame the nine hundred or so gold she had in her pouch hanging off her belt.

Thorn nudged her butt, making her quicken her pace.

Right, she thought. Stop getting distracted.

Caelum was a grand city – once you got past the villages that made up its outer southern wing. It seemed to glow at night, the rooftops plated with bronze, and sometimes even speckles of gold depending on who the person lived in it was. The richer, and the ones with more Shadow Magic at their fingertips, flew above the city in gliders – trailing a sort of black/blue aura. The laughter, the sizzle of food, and camaraderie only grew the closer you got to the centre of the city.

People smile more, though not at Reya. They laughed more, though they stifled it as she walked past. And open restaurants using Shadow Control – the ability to use Shadow Magic to control the elements – to cook food would usually spring up with a man with an enormous sword on his back eyeing her.

Chin up, eyes to the heavens, and keeping her strides, Reya continued on.

Her satchel rubbed against her thigh, smearing her clothes. It was dripping a little less now, but it was leaving a trail behind her. She heard the occasional curse come her way as it got onto the feet of a beautiful geisha once in a while. Not on purpose, because why would she? She didn't exactly hate the people of Caelum, because, well… she understood why they treated her like this.

She was lying. Reya didn't understand why they treated her like this, but she wouldn't let them win. She'd smile at them, wave, and help whenever she could. Or was allowed to. Either way, peace was always the better option. And who knows, maybe one day she'd make a friend from them.

Reya finally reached Caelum's centre, where the four rivers of the land come together. One river goes to the east, one to the west, the north, and the south. All of them came from one place – the statue of the Shiroi Kage. It was a statue that seemed to tower over the largest of buildings; one hand on his hip, the other on his legendary staff. The statue always pointed south, where the war was taking place.

Reya was going to be like that one day. She'd get her own statue, and people would be her friend. They'd invite her for lunch and dinner and maybe even breakfast. They'd smile and wave back at her and everything. But first, she needed to get her letter of acceptance.

A joyous frenzy overtook her as she glanced into the recruitment tent that had been put up right next to the Shiroi Kage's statue. There were so, so many people in there – all of them in different amounts of armour. Some in glorious white armour with spiralling dragon art on it, others in green and gold armour, and all of them with Shadow Magic. So much it seemed to make the very air buzz. They were in three lines, starting deep into the yellow tent where letters were being given out.

Reya broke into a jog to the market, doing her best not to get trampled by the Ronin, who never moved out of the way of anyone. Thorn was on her heels, dipping, darting, and panting.

The market was in the eastern part of Caelum, close by to the river and its docks. It was easier to get food from the Aurelia Kingdom that way. It would take days to come up the river with food from distant lands and from the kingdom itself, but Reya would have been crazy to think she had money to buy any of that stuff.

One day, she thought.

Reaching the market, she slowed her run and wiped the sweat dripping into her eyes. She turned right in the maze of stalls selling everything and anything from weapons, to armour, to toys that danced if you had the right Shadow Magic ability.

Her feet sore from running – she'd lost her shoes in the river taking a bath and hadn't been able to buy a new pair – she hopped on the balls of her feet as she reached the meat stand.

Drew, the burly man in charge of the stall with a bushy grey beard, lost his smile as Reya approached. "Oh. You're back."

"Hi, Drew," she said, grinning. "I have Ryker meat and skin." Thorn nudged her leg. "And a baby Ryker, too."

Drew grumbled something and leaned over the stall's wooden table. "Look. After today, I don't want you coming here. Got it?"

Reya deflated but forced her smile to stay on her face. "So… how much is it going to be?"

Drew sighed as people muttered behind Reya's back, taking a mark to circle around her as if she were a disease easily caught. "Thirty gold. If it's all fresh."

"Which—"

"—it clearly is," he grumbled.

Reya was about to put the satchel on the painted blue wood but Drew made an act of quickly snatching it away before it could slap onto the bench. He dropped it at his feet and fished through his own pouch of gold coins, mumbling as he counted to thirty.

She couldn't believe it. Her cheeks hurt from smiling, her feet ached from hopping, but that didn't quell the inferno in her gut. Reya was finally going to get an acceptance letter! Each clink of those gold coins was a step closer, and with this last step, she'd be right there. She fiddled in nervous anticipations with her hands wraps that went up to her forearms, now stained orange from dried blood.

Again, it didn't matter. She'd buy a million hand wraps when she's a disciple, and then a billion when she got her own statue. Of any colour, heck, maybe all the colours.

Drew finished counting and tossed the coins onto the ground, a few circling and rolling to a chinking stop. "Now get. Filthy jungle rat."

Reya still thanked him despite the insult and plucked each of the coins.

Thorn bared her teeth at Drew as they left, but didn't growl.

Ignoring the jolting pain that shot up her legs every time she took a step, she ran through and out of the market, shouting sorry to anyone she accidentally bumped into. And by the time she had reached the Shiroi Kage's statue again, she was not only bloody and caked with grime, but sweaty, too.

Though, strangely enough, Thorn didn't enter the tent with her. She sat down at the tent's entrance as Reya entered and joined the back of the shortest queue, right behind… behind West.

West was one of the richer kids in Caelum, with brown skin and white dreads locks which were bound by a gold lace. He wore a bright red kimono that stopped at his arms, showing off his defined arms – his right arm had a spiralling flame tattoo going from his palm to his shoulder. Reya, well, she didn't hate him exactly. But she didn't enjoy being around him.

"Kage's sake," he muttered, turning around. "What's that awful… oh, it's you."

Reya smiled, clutching onto her brown sack of coins. A thousand. It still made her head spin. "Hey, West."

"For both our sakes, pretend you don't know me."

Reya didn't speak in fear of her voice wavering. She only smiled and shuffled forward in the line. It was a big tent with its front flaps opening, but there was still that raw, rancid smell of fresh meat and blood clinging to Reya that made people gag and glance her way. She kept her eyes forward, stuck to West's back.

"You know," he said as they moved a few steps forward, "they won't allow you to get a letter."

"They will," she said. "I have the coins and everything."

He chuckled. "Doesn't matter, Freak."

Never her name with West, it was just Freak. Or jungle rat. Or animal. Reya didn't really understand a lot of the words but knew they were bad. All because… she swallowed the rising anxiety in her stomach that had found its way into her throat. She'd be allowed in, she knew she would.

"You should give up right now," he mumbled. Another step forward. "So you don't embarrass yourself more than you already do."

Reya kept her lips sealed, picking at the grime stuck below her fingernails. When was the last time she bathed in the lower river? Last week? She couldn't quite remember. To celebrate today, though, she'd go and bath with the good herbs and flowers she'd been saving up back in the treehouse. Not all of them, though. The rest would be used for the opening ceremony of the Jade Dragon Temple acceptance.

She made a mental note to wash her hand wraps as well.

And maybe her hair, too, if she had the time.

"Me though," West continued. "I'm probably going to graduate first after I kick everyone's asses in the tournament." He shrugged. "Hey, I'm probably going to do the preliminary exam, too. Just to rub it in a little more."

"Preliminary exam?" Reya asked, her heartbeat quickening. There couldn't be an entire other exam she had to pay for. That would… that would take an entire year, maybe more!

"Don't worry," he said as they came to the front of the line. A Herald sat on the opposite side, his gleaming black armour humming with Shadow Magic. He had Shadow Guarding – the ability to make armour from it. It enthralled Reya, the way it left an afterimage as he moved and brought out another slip of paper for West, the way it hummed with every slight movement. It was amazing. "The poor – like you, obviously – will be allowed to compete and try to win a place in the palace."

"Those are rumours, boy," the Herald said, his voice like wet stone. "Fill out the form and go on."

Reya bounced on her feet, adrenaline making her skin crawl. She was here! That ultimate step towards greatness, towards a statue, towards… towards recognition that didn't come with sneers or insults or the throw of stones.

When West finished, he handed the paper to the Herald, took West's coin bag, checked it, and finally gave him an acceptance letter. He tucked it into his kimono and was on his way without another word, taking the time to avoid Reya at all cost so as not to, presumably, dirty his clothes.

Which Reya didn't really understand. Why wear clothes and expect them not to get dirty? Wasn't that their job? To make washing yourself a little easier because they take on the dirt?

"Girl," the Herald said. "Forward."

Reya snapped her attention to him, her heart racing as she took a step forward.

He slid across a piece of paper and a quill.

Though there was one tiny minor problem.

She nervously chuckled and scratched the back of her head. "I… don't know how to write." Or read that well, if she was being honest. Counting was okay, but it got a little jumbled after a while. The price for not going to school like almost every other sixteen-year-old in Caelum.

The Herald sighed and took the quill and paper in his hand. "Name?"

"Reya Lionheart."

He scribbled. "Age?"

"Seventeen." She was pretty sure she was, at least. She'd stopped counting, so she mostly guessed these days. "Or maybe sixteen. Yeah. Sixteen."

He sighed and wrote. "Affiliation?"

"Aff… what?"

"Tribe, clan, or family." He'd said those things as if Reya were stupid, or like he was talking to a dog.

"I… don't have any of those."

His lips drew into a thin line as he wrote. "Shadow Magic ability?"

This was the part she wasn't looking forward to. She leaned in, and the Herald drew back. Reya whispered, "I don't, uhm, have one…"

He blinked and looked up. "Excuse me?"

"I don't have—"

"Speak up."

"I don't have Shadow Magic," she said, raising her voice just a little. But she still got shocked glances from the people behind her, and from everyone else, really. A silence fell in the tent as eyes fell on Reya. She felt small, even smaller than she usually did.

"How?" he asked. "Were you cursed? Were they sealed? If so, you're meant to go to the Alchemists with a guardian for that."

That was a good question because every baby was born with Shadow Magic apart from her. Heck, even a few plants and animals had it. But not Reya – she had no Shadow Magic to speak of. She only had her one grey eye, her blue eye, her messy red hair, and her wolf. That's all she'd ever really had.

And her pendant. She didn't know where it was from, but this was one thing she'd always had on her for the longest of times,

"I… just don't." She looked down at the ground – at her dirty, out-of-place feet on the white cobbled stone. "Is… that a problem?"

He shook his head in coy amazement. "I'll be damned." He wrote on the sheet. "Guess we have another failure on our hands. Coin?"

Reya swallowed and gave him the bag of coin, of which he pinched its very top and tried to avoid the bloodstains. Though a coin broke free of the worn leather and dropped onto the table, making Reya realize with its thud breaking the silence that people still stared at her as if… as if she were some sort of freak.

He plucked it off the table with his fingertips and dropped it in the bag. He glanced at her again, shaking his head, and then handed her a letter. But he let go before Reya could take it, making it flutter to the floor.

Before she could pick it up, a tiny white hand snatched it away and disappeared.