Infinite Realm: Monsters & Legends

ACT II ­­– Ryun

Moonlit Talk

Instead of picking up a spot for an ambush, Ryun decided to play some games with the would-be-hunters. He went back and erased any tracks leading to his camp in the mountains. Then he went ahead and made new tracks leading in different directions. By the time the sect warriors decided to follow, there was no tracks that would lead them to the woman and the child, and about a dozen others leading them in circles. He got a lot of enjoyment out of watching them follow the false tracks and then ending up exactly where they’d started.

Ryun stayed hidden in the trees, looking from a distance, far away enough that there was no chance of them noticing him. After a while, however, he got bored and decided to head back to the mountains. He doubted that they would find them now; his camp was almost a day away, and then had no tracks to find them. And if they did, he would deal with them as he had dealt with all who had ever come after him.

A few hours later he reached the camp and walked up to the mother and daughter. They had been preparing the meat that he had left them. Without saying a word, he sat next to the fire and looked at the woman, Anrosh. He studied her closely. She was fit, a warrior, obviously. Her skin was of a darker shade of green, almost brown, but not quite. Her hair was black, pulled back into a braid. Her blue eyes stared at him defiantly, her hands gripping the shoulders of her daughter, who was kneeling in front of her. To his eyes she looked like an orc, but she called herself human. Ryun remembered only a little about his talks with the Dealmaker, but he did remember that Earth had nine Iterations, or at least nine had been chosen for a chance of some surviving and being allowed into this new reality.

So, if she was human, that would mean that there was an Earth out there—or rather there had been an Earth—that had developed slightly differently, resulting in green-skinned and tusked humans. He wondered what their world was like, how it had been different than his own Earth. He debated asking, but Anrosh had been born in this realm, and she couldn’t give him the eyewitness account that he wanted to hear.

“Why are you looking at me?” Anrosh asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.

Ryun tilted his head. “Am I not allowed?”

“I don’t like it. Would you please stop?” Anrosh said.

Ryun frowned, thinking about what he’d done. It made no sense; he’d done nothing wrong. Still, he nodded and turned to look at the little girl, Kri. She looked like a smaller copy of her mother, and her blue eyes met his with far less fear than those of her mother.

“Staring at my daughter is not any better,” Anrosh said.

Ryun looked at her, confused. “Why?”

“It is rude.”

“Ah, is that a common custom around here?”

“Custom? No, it is just rude everywhere. Where in the Dealmaker’s name did you come from that you don’t know that?”

“I’m from Earth,” Ryun said.

“Of course you are from Earth, you are human.” She rolled her eyes at him. “I mean what territory are you from? Where did you grow up?”

“Earth,” Ryun said again, as he picked a piece of meat from the fire and put it in his mouth. It wasn’t cooked enough yet, but that didn’t bother him.

“All right, you don’t need to tell me,” Anrosh told him, then she spoke again. “Wait… Are you trying to tell me that you are a Ranker?”

Ryun glanced back at her seeing her studying him with her eyes narrowed. “I am a Ranker.”

Anrosh blinked, and Kri’s eyes widened in awe. “Are you really?” the little girl asked.

“I am.”

“That is so cool,” Kri whispered.

“You are from the Sixth Iteration, then?” Anrosh asked, her voice getting just a tiny bit more respectful.

“Seventh,” Ryun said.

“Seventh? That’s impossible. The Seventh Iteration should be arriving soon, but even if they already had, that would be impossible. If you were a Ranker from the seventh you wouldn’t be as strong as you are. You are lying.”

Ryun’s eyes darkened and a wisp of his Reaper’s Aura leaked out as his perk activated. He glared at Anrosh, seeing her eyes widen in terror. “I. Do. Not. Lie. Ever.”

Immediately she drooped from the stone and onto the ground, kneeling and pulling her daughter down with her, keeping her head touching the ground. “I apologize. I did not intend to insult you, master. Please, I ask for forgiveness.”

Ryun recoiled as if he’d been slapped when he heard her call him master. Memories threatened to come back up, but he pushed them back. He’d overreacted; he hadn’t intended to let his aura leak out. He pulled it back quickly and spoke. “Stand.”

She rose slowly, keeping her now shivering daughter close to her with one arm while the other was resting close to her sword. “I did not mean to frighten you. Be at ease.”

Anrosh looked as if she was ready to run, so he spoke again.

“I overreacted, and I apologize for that, but it would be prudent if you did not accuse me of lying again. You do not know me.”

She nodded her head, her mouth pressed into a tight line.

“And don’t call me ‘master.’ Ryun will suffice.”

He stared at her until she responded.

“I understand,” Anrosh said.

Seeing that he had frightened them too much, he sighed and stood up, walking a few steps away before sitting down in a meditative pose. He closed his eyes and tried to tune out the mother’s whispering as she tried to reassure her daughter.

A few hours later he felt the vibration in the ground as tiny footsteps approached him, though he didn’t turn or otherwise react when they stopped just behind him.

Minutes passed, and finally the fidgeting child cleared her throat. “Uh, I’m sorry to bother you, ma…er, Mr. Ryun. But can I ask you a question?”

Ryun glanced over his shoulder at the little girl, then nodded.

“I was wondering what you plan on doing with us?”

The question caught Ryun a bit off guard. He had thought that he had been clear with his intentions. He wanted to answers to questions, nothing more. But perhaps he had missed something. It had been a long time since he had interacted with another being capable of speech who was willing to speak without trying to kill him or curse him to death. “I want answers to questions. Afterward, you are free to go.”

“You know, we don’t really have anywhere to go. Mother means well, but without you we would be all alone in the mountains or captured and back with the sect.”

Ryun turned around fully, casting a glance at the bundled and still form of Anrosh. He had sensed her slip into sleep a while ago.

The girl saw him looking and spoke up. “She is asleep. She hadn’t slept since father’s patrol went missing. She is exhausted…and I think that you might’ve scared her to sleep.”

Ryun looked at the girl in alarm. He hadn’t intended to do something like that—he hadn’t even known that it was possible.

Kri saw his expression and quickly waved her hands in front of her. “No, no, that was a joke.”

Ryun’s expression cleared. “Ah.”

The girl walked over and took a seat next to him on the cliff’s edge, looking over at the sparse trees rising from the side of the mountains and the tiny path in the distance that led back into the valley and the forest. She didn’t say anything, which made Ryun uncomfortable, he didn’t know how to act next to a child. There had been no children on Earth. The children had been the first to die in the new world, and no new children had been conceived. Those who survived and managed to grow up to be fifteen years old and gain a path more often than not died soon after. The world had not been a kind place to children.

And then Ryun had happened to it.

Feeling the need to fill the silence, Ryun spoke. “I used to understand humor, I think, long ago.”

“Why don’t you now?” the girl asked.

Ryun wasn’t sure from where his words came, but he didn’t stop them. “I think…I think that I forgot how.”

“Do you know why?”

“I lived a life without humor for far too long,” Ryun said, as he was looking at the strange starless sky and the moon/sun. “Are you not afraid of me?” he asked after a beat.

Kri, to her credit, didn’t respond immediately. “I am. I think that you could kill both me and mother if you wished. That you could do anything that you wanted to us. But I also think that you won’t hurt us.”

Ryun felt only cold from the child’s innocence. She had no idea what kind of a monster she sat next to. It made him want to weep, but the walls were there, and holding.

“When did you arrive to this world?” Kri asked when he lapsed into silence.

He took a deep breath, then responded. “A few days ago, my world ended, and I woke up down in that forest.” He inclined his head toward the pass.

“You were transported here?” she asked, surprised.

“Yes. Is that odd?”

“Rankers from the old worlds all arrive at the same territories, always. They call them the starting zones, because Rankers, while not really weak, are not as strong as people who had lived here for long.”

“Huh,” Ryun simply said.

“So, you were always this strong?” Kri asked him. “From before you came here?”

“I was stronger.”

“I never heard of a Ranker stronger than level fifty, and those were true geniuses. Ones who are now legends, heads of great sects.”

“I don’t know about others, but I think that my world was unique,” Ryun said.

“Why?”

“That is not something that a young child should know about.”

“I’m not a child,” she said petulantly.

Ryun chuckled. “How old are you?”

“I am fourteen. I will be fifteen in four months, and then I will get my path and be an adult!”

“Then, by your own words, you are a child for four more months,” Ryun teased. By what she said, it looked like people here considered adults to be only those who could earn Essence.

Kri opened her mouth to respond, but then closed it, staring daggers at Ryun. “I’m not a kid,” she said after a while.

Ryun could detect much in her voice. He didn’t recognize most of it, but he could tell that she had seen more than a few horrible things. “Perhaps.”

She snorted.

Ryun turned to look at her. “You are not very respectful to your elders, are you?”

“I am,” she said, then paused. “All right, maybe not always. Mother tells me that I need to learn how to show ‘proper’ respect. Whatever that means.”

Ryun hummed, but didn’t comment. It was not like he cared much about such things.

When he lapsed into silence, she spoke up again. “So you wanted us in order to ask us questions. This is because you don’t know anything about the Infinite Realm?”

“Yes.”

“You could’ve gone to the sect, or captured a patrol and interrogated them. You didn’t need to help us,” Kri said casually.

“No, I didn’t.”

“So why did you?”

“Because you were interesting,” Ryun said, telling a half-truth.

“Really?”

He sighed, deciding that there was no need to omit the truth. “Yes, because you were interesting, and because I thought that what was happening to you was an injustice. And because that injustice reminded me of things from my own past.”

Kri didn’t ask him to elaborate, perhaps sensing that he did not wish to speak of it. After a while, she spoke again.

“So, will you protect us from the sect?”

“Until such a time when I feel that I have learned enough from, yes, you will have my protection.”

After that, the two of them lapsed into a silence again. Sitting next to each other, they watched the pale moonlight wash over the mountains.