Just as he was about to snap at the cocoa-haired teen, Stein rather curiously noted that Kairi’s eyes told him she lost whatever little control she had over something for she growled like a cornered animal, her grip on the wooden daggers tightening to the point her knuckles turned white. He felt his frustration ebb out, concern quickly taking its place as he moved towards the door to hopefully find someone he could send for Seloria.
“Stop.”
Stein paused in his steps and turned slowly. The other’s voice, while somewhat strong for her almost-command, was just that little bit shaky and almost dead. Feeling the gathering of magic by the younger, he stood there fronting calm as Kairi walked up to him, chanting something under her breath. He concentrated slightly, feeling the magic (an inborn trait within the Aitelorn clan) and came to the conclusion that it was a spell to show another one’s selected memories, just as Kairi stood before him.
“I can’t explain it, so… I’ll show you,” she told him with a half-smile, tapping his forehead with a finger. He remembered her gentle embrace that caught him when he fell following the effects of the spell, and the words that made him dread what he was about to find out.
“You won’t enjoy what you see.”
~*~
Stein blinked – a useless attempt to better absorb his new surroundings. Knowing that it was all but a memory was not making it any easier. Just then, Seloria stood before him, but it was not the Seloria he knew. This Seloria adorned not the eye-patch that usually masked her left eye from view. This Seloria…was just a memory.
If present time-Seloria was good-looking despite the eye patch, memory-Seloria, while four years younger than the one he knew, was beautiful. ‘But deadly,’ Stein’s mind added as an afterthought, recalling the times Seloria had reacted violently to protect either his brothers or himself when they were not alert. Briefly, while fighting away his own blush, Stein wondered if Phiol would flip out upon seeing memory-Seloria – he knew his oldest brother felt something for the icy secretary-figure.
He looked around as memory-Seloria did not move. She just stood there, leaning against a wall. The Thyride compound, while not as huge as the Aitelorn’s from what Stein could see, was pretty large. His gaze grew sad as he noted groups of people passing by the female leaning against the wall. Slightly behind them was the younger version of the person who was showing him this memory in the first place. Seloria pushed off the wall and walked through Stein, causing him to shudder at the odd sensation – it felt like walking through a spider’s web – and stopped in front of memory-Kairi, who looked up at her sister with innocent red eyes.
Stein rubbed his own. ‘I thought her eyes were orange…’ he frowned. He moved closer to the sisters, feeling a tinge of bewilderment as to why the younger was pouting at the older, and why Seloria’s smile seemed somewhat glum. It was then he noticed bandages that covered the younger Thyride’s entire right arm, which left much to wonder about. Kairi did not appear to show any discomfort when moving the arm around and there was no sign of injury. He stared at the bandaged limb for a moment longer until he heard Kairi speak.
“Are you sure this is the last ritual, Sel?” the young voice was quivering – as if she was trying to sound strong when she was scared. Seloria let out a sigh, one of a person with much to grieve upon. Stein watched as she knelt down to Kairi’s eye level and reached out a hand to pat the younger’s cheek, that sad smile on her lips still plainly visible.
“It should be,” Seloria answered. “You know the reason for the ritual yourself, Kairi. To control what’s in our Thyride blood that’s more potent in yours.”
Kairi let out a ridiculously un-child-like and definitely not ladylike snort. “Yea, fat load of help that did during the last ritual. I went out of control and k-“
“Kairi,” Seloria said sharply. “We all know it was not your fault. Stop blaming yourself.”
“Uh-huh, right. Tell me that the next time I hurt you without realizing it in our spars. You know I refuse to spar because of it,” the younger muttered darkly, scowling at her sister. Seloria absent-mindedly touched her neck at that, rolling her eyes – Stein always wondered where that particular scar on the elder’s neck came from… was Kairi the cause?
Kairi somewhat-marched past her sister. And this being the girl’s memory, left Stein with no choice but to follow after her. The cocoa-haired girl went down several walkways and down a few stairs, coming to a stop in front of a set of huge doors. She stared at it for a moment, looking as though she was having an internal debate of whether she should proceed or not before producing a sigh. Taking a huge breath, Kairi pushed the doors open, left hand reaching up to undo the bandages almost automatically as she stepped into the room.
Stein gaped. Incarnate seals of all sorts were drawn onto the limb in blood – Stein suspected it was the younger’s own. Kairi herself grimaced at the limb, muttering a curse under her breath as several priest-like people ushered her to the centre of what-looked-like a magic circle. “Stupid ancestor pact,” she spat softly, even as she tugged off the rest of the bandages. Once again, she breathed hard, red eyes sliding close as she nodded rather jerkily.
The light that flared up from the circle was so bright that Stein instinctively shielded his eyes with a hand, one eye closed as the other strained to watch. Very much unlike the magic circles he’d seen his mother activate which flared up a gentle, white light, this circle’s light was a distinguishing blood red. When his eyes finally adjusted to the light, he saw Kairi had her eyes squeezed painfully shut. The girl was on her knees, left arm clutching her right as sweat trickled down her cheeks.
Abruptly, the girl’s eyes opened, and Stein watched in rather horrified fascination as the light died down and yellow pupils seemingly stared at him before it flashed red and back again, soon settling on orange.
“Kairi?” someone ventured slowly, hesitantly, as the young girl looked around, then at her arm and let out a cry of surprise.
“No more seals? I’m impressed!” she exclaimed as the others around hear breathed sighs of relief, several even going up to the younger and hugging her, telling her how happy they are she did not have to go through the pain anymore. The girl let out another cry of surprise when one told her that her eyes were now orange.
Kairi grinned up at them with genuine happiness. It was then it struck Stein that Kairi’s smiles at present were not genuine. He continued to observe as the youngling then excused herself to see her sister and parents. They let her go, all smiles…
…and not a minute after Kairi ran up the stairs, a strange quake shook through the compound, causing the room to collapse. Kairi had turned on the stairs at the sound, shock clearly written on her features. She let out a frantic cry of “uncle”, almost rushing down the steps towards the rubble. Stein was willing to bet all the priests were her uncles, and that the room had collapsed thanks to whatever was happening above them.
“Run Kairi! Run!” Came a choked cry from rubble. “It’s dangerous! Go!”
Kairi gritted her teeth, the look reminding Stein of herself in the present. She bowed towards the rubble, calling out “I love all of you” as she ran up the flights of stairs, stopping herself to avoid an arrow.
She looked up, eyes narrowed. Several men stood before her, all of them smirking rather lecherously that made Stein feel a little protective of the young girl, even if he could not do anything. “So that’s our target?” one said. “This’ll be easy.”
With the intention to do the exact opposite, Kairi smiled and ducked under their arms, her small, lithe figure giving her the leeway she needed to run. Hearing them yell after her, she ducked into a tight corridor, using it as a shortcut to reach the exact walkway she left Seloria at. There, Stein was shocked to note, was blood and bodies everywhere. “Seloria!” Kairi had yelled immediately, summoning a pair of daggers into her hands. Several unknown individuals turned to her, moving to attack the young female.
It was quick and sudden – even Stein, who was the fastest amongst his brothers, could barely see it. Kairi had struck out and, in a swift movement, slid her daggers across her attackers’ throats, her eyes showing little but bored disinterest. As soon as she turned away from the slowly-dying attackers, her personality completely changed, calling out for her sister and parents yet again.
‘Is this why she refuses to spar?’ Stein wondered as he followed Kairi’s dash down the walkway. ‘For she is afraid she would kill someone by accident?’ Briefly he scoffed. ‘As if that’s possible with me.’
“Kairi!” Seloria yelled, slicing her way through an onslaught of assailants towards her sister. “Have you seen mother or father?” she asked the moment the two managed to reach each other. As if by instinct, the duo took their stances, standing back to back to face all those who would do them harm.
“I was about to ask you that!” Kairi said. “Oh, by the way, my eyes are orange now. No more seals.” The sentence was spoken casually while she stabbed her dagger into an attacker, her other blocking an attack aimed for Seloria’s back.
“Orange? That’s interesting,” Seloria responded rather casually, harshly shoving the tip end of her scythe into an attacker’s body. The duo of sisters continued their combined assault, quickly making their way towards the centre of the clearing they were nearby. As they took care of the attackers around them, they managed to find themselves time to take a breather.
“Oh? I see my hired help has yet to finish you two,” a completely new voice cut into the scene. The sisters whipped their heads in the direction of said voice. The person before them had short silver hair and rather evil-looking yellow eyes. His smirk seemed sadistic, and it did not sit well with the sisters, or Stein. It took him a while to place it, but Stein realized then and there with a start that the person who wiped out Jajya was the very same person who commanded the Thyride massacre.
“Who are you?” Seloria questioned, instinctively placing herself in front of Kairi. The silver-haired man chuckled, but it was not a comforting sound. Rather, it brought chills down Stein’s spine, and Kairi had whimpered behind her sister. Seloria, putting on a tough front for her sister’s sake, was trying to steady herself, though her eyes betrayed her.
“I am known as Cain,” the man said, his lips curling up into a smirk, “and like these two, you will meet your doom.” He flicked his hand and, rather unceremoniously, dropped two severed heads onto the ground near where the sisters stood. Stein’s eyes widened as Seloria dropped to her knees with an anguished “no”, and Kairi yelled the two words Stein hoped she would not.
“Father! Mother!”
Stein glared up at Cain heatedly. Knowing it was a memory did not help the anger and hatred he felt towards the man who had taken to smirking smugly at the sisters. Kairi broke out of her shock before Seloria, facing her parents’ killer with narrowed eyes. She stood a little shakily, then, in an action that spoke volumes about her speed, vanished from view. Stein, who had looked away from Cain momentarily, blinked, surprised, and snapped his head back in Cain’s direction. He did little to hide his shock in finding Kairi directly behind Cain, daggers raised.
Kairi’s movements were swift, Stein could tell, and had deadly precision. Briefly, he managed to catch the look in her eyes, and it showed the same bored disinterest the younger had when she slid her dagger across those men’s throats earlier. Briefly, Stein shuddered at the thought of fighting a berserk-Kairi. That is one spar that will not go well.
Seloria seemed to have snapped out of her shock at that point, for she too jumped up and joined Kairi in her assault. Much like the first time he saw it, Stein had stopped to marvel at the in-tandem attacks the two engaged in – Stein believed that the sisters were the most compatible with each other’s fighting styles, his proof being the fluidity of their movements.
As an outsider watching in, it was obvious to Stein that despite the sisters’ fighting style compatibility, their inexperience in combat was the main reason for their loss that day. Cain had somehow found an opening in their little-room-for-counters attack and grabbed Kairi by her head, tossing her aside as if she was nothing more than paper. Seloria, distracted by the need to help her sister, did not realize the spell Cain was directing towards her until it was a little too late. The older Thyride hissed in pain, stumbling slightly as she slapped her hand over her left eye to stop the blood flow.
“Sel!” Kairi cried out, pulling herself up from the Kairi-imprint on the wall. She gasped a little in pain, a hand going to her side as she stumbled back and leaned on the wall. Her breath came out in short pants as she moved towards her sister before her way was blocked by the very same men she evaded earlier.
“Oh, so you guys were around?” Cain asked, the sneer evident in his tone. He waved a hand semi-dismissively, saying, “Take her away. I’ll come for her when I need her.”
As the men closed in on the cocoa-haired girl, Seloria (who winced her left eye closed) growled and swung her scythe at them – which would have saved Kairi had Cain not interfered. “As for you,” he said snidely, “I have no use for you.” He set the entire compound on fire with a flick of a wrist as Seloria fought Cain desperately in hopes of saving her sister.
And yet, in the midst of such despair, Stein felt the tugging of magic that brought him out of the memory.
~*~
Stein’s eyes opened to stare up at Kairi, who had his head on her lap. The orange-eyed girl smiled down at him a little dully, and backed away slightly as Stein pushed himself up into a sitting position, a hand massaging his temples. “So,” he started, “the reason why you’re afraid to fight back is because you’re worried you’ll hurt or kill me by accident.”
He did not need to look at Kairi to see the question in her eyes. He spoke the sentence ever-so casually after all. “What makes you think you’ll be able to kill me?” he told her in a bit of a smug manner, turning to face the younger’s shocked look with a wry smirk. “We’re using wooden stuff right now, for goodness sake. If it’ll make you feel better and more secure about sparring, we’ll cast protective charms over each other before we begin so we don’t have to worry about injuries that are not self-inflicted.”
When Kairi continued to stare at him in muted disbelief, Stein rolled his eyes as he stood, pulling the shocked girl up with him. A quick chant later had both cloaked in the protective charm he casted. “There, you troublesome woman. We both won’t get hurt unless we hurt ourselves on purpose, so grab your darn wooden daggers and attack,” he told her, huffing as he picked up his wooden swords.
He stepped some ways away from the bewildered female and grinned roguishly at her. “I won’t hold back,” Stein warned lightly.
A half hour later, Seloria walked into the training room and found herself standing at the door, shocked to find Kairi actually hitting back.
