Chapter 10: After bandits

When they returned to Kalsin, it was already getting dark; not much was left to do except sleep. In the morning, Sadis had gone out and returned once Kira and Thea were dressed for the day. With him, he was carrying a longsword that he handed over to Kira, "I heard that you're somewhat proficient with this." he said as an explanation.

Taking the blade out of its scabbard and practising a few strokes with it, Kira was happy with what he found as the sword seemed well weighted and was more than adequately sharp for the occasion. "I've never actually fought someone before. I've only sparred with people," he told Sadis.

"That's fine, you won't really have to fight anyone; just watch our backs. Anyway, I was fairly certain that you would want to take this opportunity to see manipulators fighting." Sadis responded.

Nodding in agreement, Kira followed them out of the barracks and back out of Kalsin. From outside of the city walls, they followed the disused road to the quarry, disregarding caution and hoping that the bandits wouldn't run away. As a precaution against this, both Thea and Sadis had left their blue robes behind to appear as everyday travellers or mercenaries. Even if the bandits did run once they learnt that they were up against manipulators, they just needed to kill the enemy manipulator (if present), thus making it relatively simple for the city guard to deal with the rest of them.

For Kira, this would be an opportunity greater than Sadis or Thea knew because he would now be able to watch them, using his aura, fight hopefully giving him ideas as to how to get better himself. This could also develop into the perfect situation to show that his manipulations had progressed and to force them to give him some tuition in the art.

The path became thoroughly overgrown, and Kira thought he recognized them passing the cliff that he had looked down from the previous day. After this point, Sadis and Thea's demeanour changed to become slightly tenser, and Thea looked back at him to whisper, "They're up ahead; they're waiting for us." After rounding the next curve in the road, several shapes detached themselves from the shadows surrounding the trees and moved to intercept them.

"There's a toll on this road." said a bearded man who appeared to be leading the party whilst stroking the hilt of a sword hanging by his side to draw attention to it.

"Well, there's no point in being cautious any longer, Sadis," Thea told Sadis, ignoring the bandits.

"Alright," he replied, seemingly accepting the call to action.

Realizing that something was wrong and that the travellers were not intimidated in the slightest, three of the bandits further back drew their bows. The leader then repeated himself, in a slightly more threatening manner, "There's a toll on this road, and I should stress how refusing it may cost your lives."

Thea turned to Sadis saying, "Should there be an enemy manipulator, I probably won't need more than three." before disappearing, leaving an empty space where she had been standing.

Reaching for his aura, Kira concentrated it before his eyes and saw that her aura had disappeared too, and the bandits took this as their cue to let loose their arrows. This time he saw exactly what happened. As the arrows approached Sadis, rather than striking him, they simply were deflected off concentrations of aura that he must have formed before them. Unfortunately, one of the arrows bounced off Sadis to head for Kira who prepared to dodge it, being entirely unconfident in his ability to block it like Sadis had. But Sadis stopped it for him, this time growing his aura off his side into an arm-like form with an outstretched hand that blocked the arrow for Kira.

This was probably an ability, thought Kira quickly, feeling shaken by witnessing how much of a gap existed between him and Sadis regarding manipulations and realizing that this was probably what Sadis had used to throw Ulric around back in Neuverie. Expecting more arrows to arrive shortly, he diverted his attention back in front of him, but none came and he saw that only four bandits remained standing in front of him. The others could not be seen, but Kira thought he could make out at least one of their corpses hidden in the undergrowth. However, even further away, he could make out the familiar form of Thea, who looked back at him and waved at his confusion.

The remaining bandits looked around themselves, unsure as to what to do given that their comrades had disappeared from behind them and that their arrows had apparently stopped or been diverted in midair. Making his final decision, the bandits' leader shouted, "We can still take them!" and charged forwards with his remaining three allies towards Sadis as Kira was still hanging back.

Again Sadis reacted calmly by forming another arm from his aura and throwing three bandits to the side, leaving only the leader. When he got close enough to make a thrust with his sword, Sadis simply moved to the side, almost comically slowly, and allowed him to slide past before turning over to Kira to say, "He's yours. I don't want to have to do everything myself."

The man eyed Sadis warily but still turned to face Kira, who drew his longsword and held it in a fool's guard, low in front of himself, to try and convey fear or uncertainty. Taking the bait, the bandit rushed forwards and attempted to use the long reach of his arms to thrust at Kira. However, this was precisely what Kira had hoped for and he almost felt a degree of pity for the man as he neatly stepped to the side, looped his arm around his opponent's blade to control it, and then, using one hand, raised his own blade to cut at the man's neck. With that, the fight was over and Sadis finished it for Kira by breaking the man's neck with his ability.

Thea had walked back to watch him and now let out a low whistle saying, "Kira, you're pretty good." and winking at him.

"I wouldn't have said so," murmured Kira, "I was just lucky that my opponent probably hadn't had any formal training. And…"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Thea, "Just accept the compliment, won't you?"

With that, they left the remains of the bandits behind them and continued towards the quarry. The journey took some time, allowing Kira to calm down after the adrenaline of the earlier conflict and to think back on what Thea had said about not needing more than three and how that applied to her ability. He believed that it meant her ability probably involved a limited number of uses, and she thought that she wouldn't need more than three against an enemy manipulator. However, it still wasn't clear to him, just like what her ability was.

Invisibility would not make sense because her aura disappeared too, and wouldn't the energy cost of an ability like that depend on the length of time it was to be used for and not the number of uses? The only ability that made any sense would be a type of teleportation, but he couldn't understand how that might be achieved through aura manipulations.

Still dwelling on this problem, Kira arrived in the quarry and Sadis and Thea stopped in front of him for a reason that immediately became apparent. In its centre, a young man sat calmly atop a boulder and, at the entrance to the mine, around fifteen bandits stood watching. Based on the man's confident demeanour, despite him likely knowing that they were manipulators by now, Kira guessed that he must also be a manipulator.

"Nice day," the man called out, "You've caused me and my friends quite the scare!" despite appearing completely calm himself.

Ignoring him, Thea gestured at Kira to stay back and strode forwards with Sadis. For now, Kira was happy enough to let the fight progress in this fashion but, if he saw a good opportunity, he would be tempted to intervene and try attacking the enemy manipulator too with his aura now that he was more confident in using it. The man dismounted from his seat and walked to meet them whilst smiling arrogantly. With his aura concentrated around his eyes, Kira watched to see what would happen next.

Sadis' purple aura grew and reformed into a giant arm and, when the man was around ten strides from him, he reached forwards with it to grab his opponent. Not waiting for this to happen, the man dodged to Sadis' left, forcing him to change the direction that the outstretched hand was heading in to follow after him.

However, now that the enemy manipulator was committed to travelling in a specific direction, Thea disappeared and reappeared instantaneously, with her aura and all, right behind their opponent. This meant that her ability was teleportation, thought Kira. Sensing her presence and preventing himself from moving back onto the hand that Thea held out in front of her to form a knife-like blade with her aura, the man had to twist his body to the side and landed awkwardly, barely maintaining his balance.

Kira noted this technique and tried to commit it to memory to try it himself some time.

This allowed Sadis' aura-hand time to reach him and start pushing him over. To finish the fight, Thea teleported in front of her falling opponent. With him unable to change the direction of his fall, she stepped forwards and sliced through his neck, apparently ignoring the aura that he had concentrated there to defend himself with.

Watching this, Kira had had no time to involve himself, but there had been no need to regardless. Instead, it had only afforded him a greater certainty that he wanted to become as powerful a manipulator as someone like Thea, or even more extraordinary.

The remaining bandits looked among themselves, unsure as to what to do. Wanting to demonstrate that he had been progressing with manipulations, even without Thea and Sadis' guidance, and to force them to start training him formally, Kira decided to try and get involved himself. He ran at the bandits. They were prepared for him and, as he drew his longsword, he also forced his aura onto the two closest of them.

This did not work as he had expected and instead just seemed to drastically tire him out. Trying to save the situation, he knocked the short sword of the closest bandit aside and stabbed them in the shoulder before stepping back to parry a thrust from one of their companions on the right. This left them open so that he could thrust right back at them before having to call the strike off to block a different attack.

Looking around, Kira noted that, whilst many of the bandits had fled, there were still five circling him and it seemed that, in being so overly zealous in attacking them, Sadis and Thea had hung back to watch what he was trying. Trying to impress them and worried about being so outnumbered, he projected his aura at all the remaining bandits hoping to render them unconscious, even if he had failed the first time. However, this action proved to be far too costly, and he was hardly able to stop himself before his own consciousness slipped away.