Mystic Syn

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An excerpt from Englightennent From Him.

  Kalter Junge leaned forward in his seat by his desk, scribbling numbers and words on the ledgers for his battalion. He mumbled to himself of how he should have gotten this done beforehand so that he wouldn’t have to miss dinner. Things like this always happened, and he always ended up having dinner in the dead of night without his battalion.

  Dinner always has to wait for people like him.

  He was High Commander over the Third Battalion of the Dosh Military, given to him by his father, General Ausruhen Junge. Because of that, Kalter wore the dark green uniform of a High Commander with a white fur cloak: the highest honor that he could receive at his age. He had proven himself many times of how he was a skilled leader and had impressed one of the higher generals and the Queen herself. He had shown how capable he was in a battle and how he could be useful back at home, ranking one of the top in the Academy.

  But instead, he was filling out ledgers in a freezing tower, miles away from home.

  The fort was to lookout for bandits that might come their way or any warring nations, but that hasn’t happened in decades. It was an insult to place Kalter and his small battalion in the middle of nowhere with leadership talents such as his that could be used back at home, but every morning he woke up, he kept convincing himself that he was at this specific place for a reason and that he just didn’t know it yet. It wasn’t working, since he always had to do something like this instead of being home at his father’s side.

  Fort Riese was built on the mountain south of the Dosh capital, Zuhause. It rose high in the air, but not as high as some of the skyscrapers Kalter has seen in Zuhause. Like all of the Dosh settlements, they used as much heating as possible to keep themselves warm on the Doshvid Mountains, but they often resorted to fires since they haven’t gotten the modern heating elements from Zuhause yet. The fort had been built centuries ago, making it the oldest outpost still being used today, but it was only now getting updated with the new equipment they had back at the capital. 

  While the other battalions used tablets and screens to keep track of their supplies, Kalter had to fill out forms by hand until the fort received the technology that it was promised years ago.

  Kalter set his frozen pen down, then ran his free hand through his dark, white-streaked hair, pulling it back into a tail. He clenched his Dosh blue-tinged hand, trying to get feeling in it from all the writing that he’s been doing. Kalter let out a steamy breath, getting up to walk over to a table where steamy spiced wine waited for him. Thank Ko’ad, it wasn’t the alcoholic type, or he wouldn’t have been able to survive the next round of signing and writing.

  One of the two pieces of modern technology that he had in his office was a small heating pad where he could keep his beverages warm. There were often times where he wished he’d gotten the room heater, but he didn’t worry too much; all of the heating was going to the rest of his battalion and he knew a good leader would sacrifice to make sure that they were all right.

  He poured himself a glass of warm wine, sipping it.

  It had been too long since he'd gotten up from his chair, it almost seemed like his back was ready to give out on him at any given moment. The pops that came from it when he stretched proved it.

  Before he could take another sip from his mug, a knock came at the door. 

  Kalter straightened himself and uniform. “Enter,” he said, taking another sip of wine.

  A guard from outside––Ruhe, a Dosh Native as proven with his blue-tinged skin and stark white hair––poked his head in, taking a step in to salute him. “Um, sir,” he said, “there’s a young lady out here that wants to see you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Me, in particular?”

  “Said your name and everything, sir.”

  Kalter tilted his head slightly at him. Why is there a young woman lost in the mountains, especially in this unforgiving weather? Who let her out of the house? “Bring her in in two minutes.”

  Ruhe saluted again, then closed the door.

  Kalter picked up his mug, bringing it over with him to his desk. He set it down on a polished wooden coaster before getting back to work. Picking up the frozen pen, he twirled it in his hand for a second, feeling satisfied as it spun, then set it on the paper to write.

  Whatever this young woman wanted, it would have to wait for at least two minutes for him to complete these ledgers. She was probably just another messenger from his father here to tell him that he wasn’t doing his job right or that he was slacking somewhere that Kalter had checked about fifty times. Honestly, it was just plain pathetic that Ausruhen wouldn’t come to say that to him in person.

  Right as he was finishing the page, the door burst open and a chilly draft blew in.

  Kalter looked up not to see his guards, but a girl not that much younger than he was in the doorway. He glanced behind her to see the guards on either side on the ground, blood pooling around their necks. Kalter’s eye twitched as he turned his gaze back on the girl.

  She was a small thing, but her intimidating pose sent unwanted chills down his spine. She wore casual winter clothing with a tattered cloak on her shoulders that whipped in the chilly breeze. She was Meidese from the look of it, what with her smooth features and dark blue hair. Her sapphire eyes stared into his soul as he started to look at her, almost like she knew something about him that he didn’t know yet. Something about that color of eyes seemed almost familiar, but Kalter quickly brushed away the thought as he continued to stare.

  He saw no weapons on her, but he could tell that she was a weapon herself.

  Kalter gave her a hard look, despite the weird feelings he was getting from her. “This’d better be good, girl,” he said, starting to write again in his ledgers. “Those guards you just murdered were some of the best this Battalion has to offer.”

  The girl didn’t say anything; in fact, she looked to not even understand a word he had just said to her.

  “Right, right.” He set his pen down and clasped his hands together. “You probably don’t speak Doshish.”

  The girl wasn’t fazed by his comment.

  Kalter racked his head for the other languages’ words for “Hello” or “Can you understand me?” Either one of those would be good in this situation, since he was face-to-face with a murderer. Should at least memorize her voice pattern and looks, so he could find her later and take care of her, if she ever came back to the Doshvid Mountains.

  He finally came across the memory of learning phrases in different languages his father had taught him. He’d never thought it would come in handy, but it was yet another thing that his father had been right about.

  “Can you speak Doshish?” he asked, brokenly, in Meidese.

  The girl perked at the new language, then tilted her head as if she was trying to think of what she was going to do with the simple question that he asked her. She muttered to herself in Meidese that Kalter couldn’t quite pick up. It was like she was talking with herself, but he could only guess that she was either trying to talk to him or trying to find words in Meidese he would understand.

  Beginning to think that it was hopeless to converse with the girl, Kalter started to reach for another piece of technology that was given to him: a comm to the other guards. They would need to take care of the guards by his door, maybe bringing them to their local Lifegiver Mystic to either heal or bring them back to life. Before he could touch it, he heard words coming from the girl’s direction.

  “Can speak…” the girl trailed off, muttering in Meidese under her breath before coming back. “Few words… now. Doshish… similar to Medetish in… some ways. I am… here for reason.”

  The girl’s words had a Meidese accent, yet there were some hints of Medetish in there. Strange, but Kalter didn’t want to dwell on it. The words were understandable, if only broken in a few places. It was fascinating how a woman like her knew more languages than he did. It felt alien for her to know more than he did.

  “And the reason is?” he prompted slowly so she could understand the question.

  She muttered something else in Meidese that he couldn’t understand. “I am here to…” The girl’s brow furrowed. “Talk to you about… things.”

  He cocked his head at the girl. “You’re just a girl,” he continued, slowly for her to understand, “you wouldn’t know how to deal with serious things like this. It’s amazing how you know so many languages, let alone being let out of the house from learning how to be a woman. The only women that should be out doing these kinds of missions are of royal blood, which you are not.” Kalter waved his hand in dismissal towards her. “You are no use to me. Leave.”

  Hardness entered into her gaze which made Kalter wish that he hadn’t said that.

  Dark smoke started to trickle from the corners of her eyes, swirling around her as she studied him. In the blink of an eye, the girl moved quickly, before he could react, and had a black knife against his throat and hand over his mouth in less than a second. He could practically feel its sharpness cutting through him, even though she hadn’t applied pressure yet.

  The girl held him tight, despite being smaller than he was. Her iron grip was immovable, it was like he was being held by two Zuhause guards at once. He tried to struggle enough to open his mouth and call for the rest of his guards, but she tightened her grip on him.

  “I don’t suggest you do that,” her distorted voice purred.

  Kalter furrowed his brows as he stopped struggling, but started to form a plan of action as the girl removed her hand from his mouth. The girl had been speaking very broken Doshish before, and now she was speaking it fluently as if she had grown up speaking the language. Either the Battalion was playing a joke on him, a Discord Mystic was playing with his head, or he was going mad after writing fifty ledgers and multiple pages of supply orders for blankets.

  “I’m only here to ask about one thing,” the girl said, her distorted voice growing more uncomfortable to hear by the minute. She removed her hand from his mouth, allowing him to speak.

  “Ask, and I might answer,” Kalter said, lowering his hand to his side, splaying it out to be ready to strike when given the chance.

  “Are there any monasteries near here?” she asked, simply. “If so, how far away are there from this outpost?”

  The question baffled him. Out of all the things that she could be asking him, that was the question she wanted to know the answer to? She could kill him with one swipe of the knife and had the power to ask him any question, but that one? Either she was messing with him, or she really didn’t know her geography.

  “That?” he guffawed. “Out of everything you could ask me, you want to know the answer to that question? How dumb are––”

  Kalter wasn’t able to finish his sentence as the girl pressed her arm around his windpipe, causing him to gasp. He tried to breathe for that precious air, trying to claw away at whatever was keeping him from breathing, but to no avail.

  “Thirty miles south from here!” he gasped, his vision darkening. “The Southern Doshvid Monastery is on one of the highest peaks. Tallest structure you can see on a mountain, you can’t miss it!”

  The girl let go of him, dropping him to the freezing ground. She walked away slowly as he gasped hungrily for air, his vision returning to normal. Kalter coughed and rubbed his throat, silently grateful that he could breathe again. He remained on his hands and knees, trying to grasp his surroundings.

  He coughed, then looked up at her walking towards the door. “Not surprised,” Kalter muttered, rubbing his sore throat as he made a tsk sound. “A girl like you wouldn’t know something so simple.”

  She halted, turning towards him. Her eyes remained pure black, but bloodlust was now showing through. Smoked bled from the corners of her eyes, filling the room with a light layer of it. A dark aura fell over her, causing her to tilt her head. Her fingers twitched ever so slightly. If he looked even closer, her veins started to turn black.

  Instead of spouting off a retort at his remark, the girl laughed. Her distorted laughter filled the air, sending chills down his spine. It filled the silence, but it made him more uncomfortable with being in the same room as her.

  “Why are you laughi––” 

  She thrust her hand out, pitch black, sharp ribbons of pure energy shot towards him. Before he could summon or say anything to warn his guards of what was happening, they drove themselves into his shoulders.

  Kalter cried out in pain. He wanted to collapse, but the ribbons held him in place; in fact, they were lifting him up in the air. Kalter felt tears of pain stream down his face as he screamed, never feeling this much pain in his life. The pain of every battle, even if most of them were simulations, came back to him in its purest form. He wanted to fight against it, but the pain was too much. The ribbons hurt him physically, but it was also triggering his deepest memories.

  He was ridiculed for being the only one in his family that didn’t have the same Mystic power as the rest were surfacing in his memories. What made him hurt even more was that most of those memories were coming from his family, save a few by people that he had just met. His siblings were the ones that teased him the most about it, but he knew that his parents had been the ones that allowed for them to tease him as so. Deep down, they were disappointed in him and believed his Mystic power to be a curse to the family.

  That was the reason why he was High Commander of the Third Battalion and why he was shoved away from the rest of his nation. His family was embarrassed on his behalf, even though all he did was to uphold the family’s honor in the nation and to protect it from any harm that came its way. That was the reason why he had never seen anyone else at all, besides the young men and the few women who served beneath him for the last couple of years. Somehow the nation was convinced that he was a curse too, so they rarely sent replacements for the soldiers in his Battalion, and he was left practically alone with the soldiers that had started to believe he was a curse.

I know I’m a failure to my family, Ko’ad, he thought, sobbing silently. But please, don’t let me relive it.

  From his darkening vision, Kalter saw the door open and a couple of guards marching in. He tried to shout a warning to them, but it didn’t take them long to be cut down by the girl’s black blade, which seemed to drink the light around it. Their bodies fell to the ground, their blood soaking through their dark blue uniforms and collecting into one big pool of liquid scarlet.

  The girl showed no emotion about what she had just done, but she gave a mad grin at him, causing Kalter’s stomach to churn. She had just murdered without a second thought. No thoughts arose in her gaze when she swept her blade to finish them. He knew that sometimes he could be a bad person to his Battalion at times, but she was being cruel.

  No one kills my soldiers and gets away with it.

  Reaching to his side and concentrating hard, he tapped into his own Mystic power: Black Ice. Instantly, a chill fell over him as a knife made of dark ice fell into his hand. It’s cold handle melted into the shape of his hand, making it perfect for his grip. Kalter raised and sliced the ribbons free with his ice knife, much to the girl’s surprise.

  He fell to the ground, blood soaking his uniform as he got to his feet. Vision blacking out and a bit of coughing for a second, Kalter composed himself to look at the murderer. He growled at her, summoning another knife in his other hand, even though it pained him to even move his arms. Every twitch his arm made was another flash of pain.

  Kalter fell into the Robust stance, his left foot in front of the other while keeping one arm in front as well. It was a fairly simple and strong stance, but it got the job done and that’s all that mattered to him right now. He gave her a glare as he saw her start to laugh again.

  “You’re a feisty one, I’ll give you that. Licentia would be proud.” Her eyes blazed with amusement as she studied his stance. “But you won’t win this fight, majestas.”

  Kalter started to growl out an insult, but more ribbons shot towards him. 

  He was ready this time as he raised his knives to slash the ribbons away. Breathing a puff of air out, he tapped into Black Ice again. He slammed his foot into the ground as hard as he could, this time jagged dark ice bursting out of the ground, making its way towards the girl with as much speed as he could summon. She easily sidestepped the ice, looking curious at the ice that had been built where she had once been standing and looking at it for a second too long. The girl raised an eyebrow at him, taunting him. She raised her hand, and Kalter readied himself for more ribbons, but that was not the case.

  An ivory knife shot from her hand, zipping its way towards him as it plunged itself below Kalter’s right shoulder, pushing him into the freezing wall behind him. The blade snapped through his shoulder blade and embedded itself into the wall, causing him to scream in pain again.

  His dark ice knives slipped from his grip, shattering when they hit the ground. His energy felt like it was being sapped with every passing second that the white blade was in him. It was like someone had stuck a painful vacuum in him, and was sucking the energy he wanted to use to fight back. His sticky blood soaked his shirt and his uniform coat as his vision continued to darken to the world around him.

  The blur of the girl walked towards him and with one finger, pulled his chin up to raise his head and meet her bloodcurdling gaze. The exact emotions were unclear, but there was a wicked grin on her face as she pulled close. The black, swirling pits of smoke stared into him, unmaking his every emotion.

  “Don’t ever insult her again,” her distorted voice said, the wicked grin fading as she gave him a glare that could kill.

  The girl snatched the knife from Kalter, sliding it out of his shoulder with ease. He couldn’t tell what her expression said when she paused over him, and it made him even more uneasy. Her footsteps echoed through the room, treading through the pool of blood as she walked towards the doorway.

  He fell to the ground, coughing. It even hurt to cough, let alone move his arm. “Who are you?” Kalter rasped, lifting his head a little bit and rolling off of his injured shoulder, his energy gone.

  The girl stopped in her tracks, peering over her shoulder. The black smoke had stopped trickling from the corner from her eyes, but the rest remained black from what he could see. The blur tilted her head down at him, and seemed to find this amusing.

  “It’s been a pleasure, High Commander Kalter Junge of the Third Battalion, son of Ausruhen and Yvonne Junge, nephew of Queen Runa Junge,” she smirked, the wickedness returning. “I’m the Angel of Death.”

  Without any other explanation, the Angel of Death strolled past the dead bodies and out the door.

  He rested his head on the chilly ground, his eyes widening with shock. He may not be in constant contact with the outside world, but he knew the name. That name was hushed in conversations, whispered when something happened in the outside world, because where the person who held that name was, death followed not far behind. 

  Kalter knew that the person who had just visited him had been playing with him, and could kill him without blinking an eye.

If they ever met again, it would end with his death.