Chapter Text
1179
There is an old poem, old enough that the name, the author, and most of the stanzas have been lost to time. Even so, there is one line of the prose that is still often recited to this day, centuries later.
“Kamira is the land of music and yokai.”
It may be so that yokai are largely extinct within the nation, and have been for some time, but no matter its many forms, since its very beginnings, the Holy Kingdom of Kamira has always been a land of music.
Proud Kamira. The birthplace of the craft of spellsinging. Once an art only known to the blessed gods and accursed yokai, who so proudly sang Kordrea into being, it was in Kamira that humans first understood and proliferated this art. The ability to turn song into imposed reality, mortals may be more limited in the craft than their forebears, yet it was still wholly unlike anything that had come before. Music turned into magic, true magic, now harnessed by humankind.
It is possible, with time and effort, for any person to learn the art of spellsinging. However, every individual has their own unique potential that can be impossible to predict, and there is no way of knowing just what one’s art may look like. Even achieving the ability to accomplish minor effects with the art may take years of study, and to most, it is impossible to learn independently. It is an art that must be taught by one who has already achieved their fullest potential within the discipline.
For such reasons, Kamira once had a veritable monopoly on spellsinging, in part what has led to the nation’s conquering of over a quarter of Kordrea’s total land. Because, you see, Kamira was founded by exceptions.
One is not born with the ability to spellsing. This is a fact, only called into question by the existence of three clans. The three clans who would found the Holy Kingdom, and unite their land under one Kamira. The three clans who would proliferate the art of spellsinging. The three clans who were truly blessed, granted the ability to spellsing innately.
The first and greatest of these clans, the family from which every Exalt that has ruled over Kamira has hailed, is Clan Shiratori. Their family, known for their vibrant pink hair and crest containing a matching sakura flower, has ruled over the Holy Kingdom since its foundation. Known for offspring that are peerless in the art of the spellsong, Clan Shiratori enjoys wealth and political power unparalleled by any in Kamira.
The second, sworn to the service of Clan Shiratori, is Clan Enjoji. Known often as the bodyguards of the ruling family, the Enjoji have historically devoted their efforts to creating ideal soldiers. While perhaps less historically talented in the spellsong than their counterparts of the Shiratori, Clan Enjoji makes up for it with ruthless martial discipline. A true line of right and proper knights, with chivalry and honor aplenty.
Last of the three founding clans is scarcely even worthy of mention. Clan Ayase. A name synonymous with subversion and treachery, the Ayases were rightfully driven to extinction long ago, weeded out and cut down by Clans Shiratori and Enjoji not even a century after Kamira’s founding. Yes, Clan Ayase is a name better forgotten, were the texts to be believed.
Today, Kamira enjoys nearly 600 years of hegemony in Kordrea. Despite the war with neighboring Honusoko grinding to a standstill in the past two years, the quagmire does little to detract from Kamira’s position at the top of Kordrean politics. It is no wonder, then, why hundreds of thousands of foreigners from outside the continent choose Kamira to be their home. The new capital in Rukio, moved from the original, ancient Kamigoe, is also known as the World City. A city of over three million inhabitants, with millions more merchants and travelers passing through. A hotspot of culture, architecture, learning, and the continued proliferation and endurance of the Kamiran spellsong.
Yes, so proud is Kamira, so grand are her accomplishments, so blinding is her luster, it is so easy to forget that the entire accursed nation is built on a foundation of blood, of corpses, of graves, of rot.
A grand nation indeed, sitting on the precipice of its many Sins.
She ran through city streets and dark night, the rain matting her pink hair to her head in a way she knew her father would regard as unseemly, but truthfully, he was the furthest thing from her mind.
She couldn’t be caught. She knew that. Twelve years of life were enough to understand the instinctive need to run for her life. She could hear, somewhere behind her, leather boots slapping on wet stone roads. Rukio’s streets wound and twisted, but she knew this area. She had grown up here, after all. She could only hope that her pursuers hadn’t
Of course, twelve years of life were enough to instill in young Aira Shiratori an undue confidence, one that shattered before her as she turned down an alley, only to be met with a wall. She was trapped.
Panic, cold and hellish and real, crawled up her throat. Trembling hands grabbed at her blouse as she folded in on herself, despair winning over her will. She was going to be taken, wasn’t she? Taken back to that castle, back to the family that never wanted her, but had to have her.
Two sets of footsteps came to a stop behind her. A gruff, slurred voice spoke first.
“Oi, brat, ya done went ‘n’ cornered yerself, eh?”
The other, much more nasally, whispered to his comrade. “You see that hair, Quinn? You don’t reckon she’s a Shiratori, do ya?”
“A Shiratori?” The first voice, Quinn, laughed drunkenly. “Fuck are you on about? Shiratoris ain’t the only one with pink hair, Tsuko. Besides, I reckon it’s a dye job.” Aira could feel attention back on her. “What says you, brat? You a Shiratori, out here in the slums?”
She couldn’t go back. Wouldn’t go back. “N-No… I-I have no family.”
“Just what I like to hear,” Tsuko said. “Bet she’d sell for a decent price, y’know. Kito family would probably take her for a good sum.”
Aira’s eyes snapped to the two of them now. Quinn was a portly man, dressed in chainmail, with a warhammer slung over his back, while Tsuko was much more lithe, a scimitar hanging at his side, and leather armor clinging to his slender frame. Aira didn’t miss the way they were swaying, either. She could practically smell the alcohol from here.
“Tch, Kitos,” Quinn groused distastefully. “Buncha weirdos, them. Rather stay far away, good pay or no.” His eyes wandered up and down Aira’s form in a way that made her skin crawl. “May just take her in myself. Put her to work, properly.”
“I-I… I j-just wanna go…” Aira faltered, unsure how to finish the sentence. Where could she go? What was even waiting for her?
“Ahhh, don’t be like that,” Quinn’s boisterous laugh echoed in the narrow alley, cutting through the pitterpatter of the rain on the shingle rooftops. “You should be grateful, really. I’m offerin’ to take you in, outta the kindness o’ my heart!”
“Gods, you’re a gross bastard,” Tsuko grumbled, as though he’d seen this a hundred times before.
“Don’t judge a man for likin’ what he likes!” Quinn said, drawing closer to Aira. “This one here’ll be a real looker in the days to come, I can tell ya that much.”
Aira’s breath caught, the implication fully hitting her. This couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be. She was meant to be a princess! A princess who left her corrupt family behind, only to rise against them in noble revolution someday! Just like in all the books she had read, they all had prepared her to run away from home, to be prepared to turn against this rotten kingdom!
Only…
In all the books she read, the brave warrior princess had the strength to fight her way out of something like this. And Aira knew… she knew that she didn’t
She choked back a sob, young voice cracking in hopelessness. “Please… just let me-”
“Feh, how typical of men of Rukio,” a new voice cut in, ancient and withered, jolting all three of the alley’s current occupants. “You see a child in need and see opportunity… truly the gutter trash of humanity.”
As the two men turned away from Aira to face the voice’s origin, she herself got an unobstructed view. Standing at the mouth of the alley was a woman so old that she may have been here for Kamira’s founding. Her skin was leathery and tough, and her hair was more an unkempt mane of white color, jutting out and billowing down her back. She may not have raised her voice, but her glowing amber eyes stared at the men with a hatred so pure, it was hard to focus on anything else.
Still, Aira noticed the lack of any rain on her, realizing that the crone was under an umbrella, despite her hands being held behind her back.
Only after looking at the umbrella long enough did she finally see the person holding it. It was odd, almost like an optical illusion pushing her eyes away, but sure enough, there was a boy beside the old lady, respectfully holding an umbrella over her head. The boy was probably Aira’s age, and maybe a little shorter. He had round glasses that fit over his face, the rain’s condensation obscuring his eyes from view, and curly, unruly black hair. He was a bit hunched inwards, and privately, Aira thought he looked a bit like a dork, especially dressed in the kimono that must have been intended to match the crone’s. It was way too big on his small, scrawny frame. His expression was hard to make out, the bottom half of his face wrapped in a red scarf.
“Piss off, old bat,” Quinn barked, unshouldering his maul. “Mind yours. Nothin’ for you here.”
“Quinn, I dunno about this…” Tsuko said, nerves finding their way into his voice. “She’s… maybe we should leave it.”
“You were going to defile the girl,” the crone said, voice as sharp as knives. Yellow eyes turned to Tsuko. “And you were content to let ‘im. Neither of you are worthy of your lives, far as I figure.”
“You wanna die, you bitch?” Quinn snarled, stepping forward. “I ain’t gotta single qualm killin’ a walkin’ corpse!”
“Q-Quinn,” Tsuko called to him, anxiously drawing his scimitar. “We should… we should-”
Then, the lady was next to Aira, standing over her, the rain finally hitting her long cape of white hair. “Hello, brat. You’re a Shiratori, ain’t ya?”
Aira could hear the two men’s confused yelps, could hear them turn in shock, looking at where the lady had seemingly reappeared. Neither of them seemed to notice the boy, still standing at the mouth of the alley.
Aira knew she should lie. She knew that. But something about this crone told her that she would see right through it anyway. “Y-Yes…”
“Run away from home? These two start tailin’ ya?”
Aira simply nodded to both counts. The crone sighed, an old, worldweary sound.
“Ken,” she said, not turning away from Aira. “Take care of the two bastards, will ya?”
“Oi! I’ll put you in the dirt-!”
Suddenly, a sound flooded the alleyway. A sound that seemed to blot out the rain, the leather boots on stone, the chattering of Aira’s teeth… a sound that seemed to silence everything else, if only for a moment. Aira knew what this was.
This was a Spellsong.
She could hear it, then. A violin, the boy’s auratic attunement. The violin was not alone, joined by three others, as his aura sang out in a melancholic chord, a gentle vibrato accompanying it. Not quite happy, but not quite sad either.
Aira could hear the two men turn, facing the boy, seeming to finally notice him. It was then that the chord shifted.
The sound went from melancholic, to being… heavier. Denser. The same chord, but a different key.
Ah. He was a choushi tenchi.
Aira moved her head to look, but found only the sleeve of a kimono, the crone moving her hand to block her sight of it. Still, she heard the men talk.
“The fuck?”
“H-He’s a monster!”
“You oughta go home, brat,” the crone said to Aira, over the sound of metal on metal. “Streets of Rukio ain’t safe for any lonesome young girl, especially the daughter of nobility.”
A heavy thud, a gurgle. The sound of a body hitting the floor.
“I-I c-c-can’t,” Aira whimpered. “Th-They’re… they…” Her voice fails her, yet again. The crone seems a bit unimpressed.
“I’ll say it again, yeah? This ain’t the place for a girl to be by herself.”
Blade slashing through flesh. Another thud. The sounds of violins fade.
Aira is granted a reprieve from the rain. Looking up, she finds the umbrella. The boy stands beside the crone, sheltering both her and Aira, seemingly uncaring to the cold water himself. For the briefest of moments, Aira thought she could see white in that mess of black hair.
Up close, she can see his eyes. A sweet brown color, eyes that take her in with concern.
Kind eyes. So unlike what she’d been used to.
“Y-You’re… hurt,” she managed to say, eyes tracking a knick on the side of his face, blood slowly seeping from the wound.
“Ah,” he said, voice surprisingly sheepish. A hand came up to trace the wound, and Aira could see the dagger still held, dripping with deep crimson. “Nothing bad. Doesn’t hurt.”
“Tch. Don’t be so casual, boy,” the crone grumbled. “You need to be more careful. It don’t matter much how good you are, how fast you are, even a drunk can get a lucky swing, you hear?”
Despite her disparaging words, the elder brought a hand up to the wound to inspect it, the movement far more gentle than what Aira would have expected from her. “Feh, looks like it was just a graze. I’ll patch your dumbass up later.”
Turning, she ruffled the boy's hair, stepping into the rain, walking off without a care to the cold it must have brought… but as Aira looked closer, it seemed like the rain had no effect. Even her kimono still seemed dry, despite the boy’s matching one being waterlogged.
The boy, Ken the crone had called him, stood above Aira uncertainly, still sheltering her with the umbrella.
“Th-Thank you,” she managed to get out. “I… thank you.”
“I just did what anyone would do,” he said, meekly. “Do you have a home you can go back to?”
Freezing up, her eyes fell to her hands, still firmly placed on the cool stone of the ground. She felt her body go tense, felt her blood thin, felt the scars on her back bristle beneath her blouse. Her voice was failing her, it was all she could do to simply shake her head.
“Granny’s an evil lady,” Ken said. “Very evil, even.”
Aira’s eyes rose to meet his. “She… she seemed kind enough?”
“She is, in her own way,” he replied, eyes turning to the other side of the alley, where the crone must have been waiting on him. “She is evil, though. Mean and ornery and critical and evil.”
Kind brown eyes turned back to Aira, and he smiled down at her. “But… she’s never turned away a child in need. If you don’t have a home to return to… you can come with us.”
Aira’s breath catches, and she can feel it. This feeling that this is an important choice. A choice that will likely change the course of her life going forwards. She wanted to become the brave warrior princess she was destined to be. Would a warrior choose to work with an evil being (Aira grew less convinced that the crone was even human…), regardless of her circumstances? Would that not be to become evil through association?
She hears movement, the rustling of cloth, and suddenly, something is being wrapped around her neck. A scarf. His scarf. Red and warm and lovely.
“I can’t promise that it’ll be easy,” he said, “but I promise that she can help you. She can teach you to be strong. Strong enough that you could do anything, be anything.”
“I could be a warrior princess?”
The question seems to take him off-guard, head tilting to the side for a moment, before he chuckles. Not the mocking sound that she had grown so used to when speaking of her dreams, but fond, friendly.
“You could be the coolest one ever.”
And so her decision was made.