The blades of Purity
Prologue
	Kath shuffled forward, the cuffs chafing into his wrists.  Chains clung to his waist and feet, shambling along behind him in his slow gait.  Warry guards crawled along with him, prescious guns housing more prescious bullets trained on him, bareley noted in his plans.
	"Prisioner 12736, you stand accused of crimes against humanity, Slavery, and Murder, totaling in no less than 156 counts, assaul-"a voice rang out.
	The small room was an advantage.  Physically he was able to best any of them on their best day.  As it was many were past their prime, and even their fear noted this wasn't their best day.  Even without his blades, even without ember, they feared him.  he liked that.  The aroma was intoxicating, almost a sweet stench.  Yet he knew it was time for him to leave these accomidations.	The prehistoric woman sat before him, already judging him with her eyes.  Despite not technically having had a trial she was already declaring him guilty.  It wasn't an incorrect assumption, but something about how her eyes bored down along her snout irked him deep in his core.  She was daring him to plead innocent, ready with the plethora of evidence to counter him with, to make him see his own guilt.  she would die, screaming.
	Kath took account of his other opposition, 8 jailors, armed with functioning firearms he wouldn't have been able to identify a year ago.  Each of them bristeling with muscle and rising to no less than six feet in height.  Yet he stood more than a full foot taller than the biggest of them.  four judges or atournies, something he didn't much care about.  Only one had earned his ire.  The speaker droned on.
	He casually stretched his cramped back muscles as the judge continued to pour over more and more charges, as if his fate weren't certain.  The chains weighed more than he expected, not by much, but he was still surprised at their forethought.  It wasn't enough though, he slowly opened his deep ember eyes and gazed at the judge, bringing her beneath his fire.
	The judge faltered as her own eyes caught his, they were hard, used to dolling out punishment from an iron gaval, but they melted in the power that kath bore.  his eyes burned a pure red, no pupil or iris to interupt his gaze.  They marked him for what he was, half-demon.  He felt his blood quicken in anticipation as she paused for that breifest of seconds.  She was prey, much as she wanted to put on a strong front, much as she prattled on 'in the name of justice', she was prey and would end as such.
	Kath flexed his muscles, preparing to make his move and the guards to either side tensed.  subconciously they understood the feeble iron cage wouldn't hold against his might.

	"-nd in punishment for your crimes you will be-"
	"168." Kath muttered.  The room fell silent.  his guards clutched their firearms as driftwood in a monsoon.
	"I beg pardon?"The speaker aserted into the void, challenging the silence he had created.

	"my count for murder should not be onefiftysix. it should end in a final onesixtyeight." he continued, enjoying how a simple sentence could bring so many into order
	"Our records are quite clear Prisioner 12736, if you had commit-"
	"You miscounted, there are twelve victims yet remaining in this room."The guards once again tensed, but still failed to act.  Their own willingness to allow an enemy to live would be their death sentence.  Kath reveled in terror he created with simple words, but unfortunately his fun would have to be cut short, a job needed doing, an army needed a general.
	He casually seperated the cuffs chafing into his wrists, the smell of burning flesh tickling his nostrils.  He quietly destroyed each guard's gun in turn, a simple measure once you knew the fragile mechanisms of the killing machines.  As he did the final measure of sealing the single exit to the room he placed his free hands on the cage.
	The room burst into a flurry of motion as the realization ran through his jailors.  Useless firearms raised, ready but unable to deliver deadly payloads.  He calmly pressed his hands into the malleable metal, embracing the searing pain overtaking his hands.  He heard a report of clicks arround him as each guard attempted to end his life.  Kath felt a vague ammusment muddled with rage at the simply thwarted attempt on his life.
	The guards roared into flame, transmuting from sentient to cinders in a matter of seconds.  As kath slowly extricated himself from the molten wreckage that was once his cage he glared at the woman speaker.
	He slowly rose to his full height, towering over the feeble woman.
	“Where is my weapon, answer quickly and I will reconsider your fate.”  He growled, his unblinking eyes showing her how a true perdator bears himself.  Her mouth feebly jarred open and closed, her eyes wide and darting to the guard corpses, some still twitching.  Kath slowly moved to hold her hand at the wrist, wrenching it from her chest as she shied back.
	The heat between them slowly built from what must have been a painfully high level to where her skin began to smoke.  He continued to generate the small flame between him until she cried out in agony.  As her shrill voice echoed around the room he released his hold, little good it would do to hamper the flame.  His gaze continued to bore into her.
	“AAH...Evidence compound...sixtwosix...locker...B!”  She screamed through gasps of air.  Kath worried for a moment his toy would lose consciousness.  Another judge moved to comfort her and was greeted by a quick incineration.  Kath slowly began to limp towards the hall, mulling over a suitable fate for the woman.  As he approached the threshold her two remaining colleagues began to vomit fire.
	Kath slowly tore the heavy metal door free as the woman sobbed in terror at her friend's fates, the noise a sweet synphony to him.  As he placed the heavy door smoothyl against the wall her turned again to consider the speaker.
	“You did well to answer when you did.”  He said through a wide grin, eyeing her.  What remaining color she had left her face. Suddenly she broke into a scream as her limbs burst into flame.  “Now don't you go anywhere, we have a lot of fun ahead of us...”
Chapter 1

	Aleiz's heart raced, his pulse beating a simple rhythm into his ears.  To his left and right routes were closing, filling with charactures of humans.  Cultists wearing enongated gas masks, elephant trunks running to canisters on their backs.  Their faces were inhuman, rubber gloved hands wielding scalpel and bonesaw as easily as machete and gun.  Aleiz sprinted on in the humming crimson floodlight, searching for an escape, searching for safety.
	A gasp escaped him as he broke from his nightmare.  Aleiz held his knife at the ready.  He took a moment to calm his sweat drenched body, wracked with shudders as his muscles involuntatily tensed and released.  His ragged breathing gradually calmed as he reminded himself he where he was.
	It was almost an hour before he found himself exiting his room.  Not his worst day, at least today he had something to focus on, something concrete.  Aleiz ran himself through his morning ritual.  He pulled on his clothing, familiar, tight, secure.  The dark cloth fit familiarly, hugging his body, but not impedeing his movment.  The slight tinkling even was reasuring as he pulled on his metal soled shoes.  He consciously slowed his raging heart as he slipped on his gloves, the glint of steel shining off their palms, despite the early morning dark.
	By the time he was reaching for his other esentails the nightmare was nearly forgotten.  He slowly meandered around his room, gathering weapons.  His quiver rested on his back, brimming with arrows, his composite bow strung across his chest.  His pockets were filled with shuriken, sharpened to a fault.  It wasn't until he was truly ready that he drew his final weapon.  A kama it's handle connected by twenty-foot sharpened chain to a weighted throwing knife.  It's nicked and scratched blade had borne him through many troubles.  Today it would once again proove it's worth.
	Aleiz gathered up his travel bag, filled with water and rations, preparing to travel through the desolate terrain.  A singular destination in mind.  The long desert sands, still cold from the night's ravaging, greeted him as he slowly stepped from his meager cabin.  He took his first steps towards his new life, towards the first thing that had truly felt right since he left his post.  Since he left Dragon Village.
	He walked under the pale blue sky, the moon his only company, desert stretching behind and beyond him.  A simple path along a paved stretch of road led in the way of his destination.  He had faltered before, he had simply scouted the compound on previous erands, though his nightmares spurred him on this time. He wondered, not for the first time, if this would bring him peace, if he would survive, if he genuinely cared.  All he knew was that the marching felt good, it gave him purpose of a sort.
	The purpose helped contain the more feral thoughts, those of fight-or-flight.  The purpose ordered him.  Today he wouldn't turn back.  He would end those that had ruined him.  His thoughts turned to wether his emotions were true, or those of his infected blood.  It mattered little.
	As clearly as his eyes or hair were marked, so too was his blood.  He was quicker to anger than before, he lusted for battle more, he felt himself spurred towards vengence.  He often wondered how much of that were his own thoughts, and how much was the teal blood coursing through him.  It mattered little, he was learning how to deal with his 'power', his curse.
	Aleiz climbed into his familiar thoughts as he trudged on in the early morning light, the moon and path guiding him true.  As the sky brightened he broke from the paved path, easily walking into the desert, following an unseen path.  It was beyond mid day before his destiniation was even in sight.
	The cliff dropped before him, a mesa with a lone tree, gnarled and stubborn, overlooking a valley.  Smoke poured from the valley, a walled compound filling his sight.
	Even from this height Aleiz could see guards moving on the walls.  Their distortedly long faces, trunks, connected to their backs.  Their eyes freakishly wide, surfaced in glass.  Aleiz remembered them all too well.  Even now, looking at them from so far away made his hands quake.
	He watched over them in the dull light, the smoke obscuring most of his ridge.  He secured his rope to the tree and began his arduous descent into the valley.
	The guards only began to take notice once the first of them dropped.  Aleiz had painstakingly worked his way into a scrub bush, waiting for the optimal moment to take his shot.  When he released his arrow flew true, removing the blight of one cultist from this valley.  Many would follow today.
	He made his way, running towards the imposing wall.  The guards were slow in replacing the coverage the dead guard was responsible for.  Aleiz made the best of it, breaking cover and reaching the wall before the alarm even went out.
	He planted a foot on the wall and kicked off the ground with momentous force, leveraging his momentum and  strength for every inch of height he could get.  As he kicked off he focused some of his energy in to the push, boosting the result beyond the human norm.  He vaulted the fifteen foot wall, infiltrating the compound before the guards could react.
	His hands were a blur, casting his shuriken at the guards with firearms.  He felt the hate frothing inside him, boiling just beneath the surface.  The tortures he endured at their hands, the injustice, the inhumanity.  He was torn down piece by piece, every semblance of dignity stripped from him, by these men here.  They needed death.  They deserved worse.
	A spark grew from Aleiz, starting near his core, envigorating his muscles as it built and discharged from his arm.  He extended his arm a final time, a circuit planned, the discharge of electricity was phenomenal.  A light, bright as the sun, lept quicker than thought along the shuriken, jumping to the target cultists, extinguishing life like a breeze to a candle.  As it left it took something with him, he felt his limbs weakening
	Before the guards had even hit the ground Aleiz was preparing his kusari-gama.  He landed in a frenzy, barely feeling the sluggishness suddenly boreing into his muscles.  He sprinted to the entrance to the complex, guarding it against any guards who might attempt to raise the alarm.
	Of the eight on the wall, four had been armed with guns.  One fell to his first arrow.  The others to his curse.  of the four remaining they weilded crude medical instruments, broken syringes, rusty saws, scalpels.  They rushed him with wild abandon.  He struck out with steel, his knife easily splitting a man's eye.  He crushed another's skull before the last two managed to close the gap.
	They paired off on either side of him, flanking his guard, neither ready to make the first strike.  One stepped forward, his clumsy strike bringing a razor sharp scalpel towards Aleiz's face.  Aleiz quickly severed the hand with the kama end of his weapon, neatly bringing the blade up and under the cultist's neck to end another life.  The ease of it was starteling.
	Pain exploded from between his shoulders as he paid for his open stance.  The remaining cultist had pounced on the opportunity, striking Aleiz as he dealt with the first threat.  Aleiz steeled himself against the pain.  Compared to the original terrors, this was a minor inconvenience.
	Aleiz spun, wrenching the broken syringes from the cultist's hands, and swung his knife towards the cultist's face.  As Aleiz spun he was surprised to see the cultist had backed away with surprising speed and was approaching a dropped weapon.
	Aleiz released the knife, throwing it well wide of the cultist.  As it cleared the man, Aleiz wrenched the chain, running forward.  The blade quickly curved it's path, pulling the sharp chain around the cultit's awaiting neck.  Aleiz caught the knife with practiced ease, pulling the cultist into a makeshift gatrotte.  Aleiz sawed back and forth slowly as the cultist shuddered, the life quickly escaping him.
	As the cultist grew limp aleiz released the corpse and began gingerly extricating the impaled medical equipment from his back.  He needed to conserve his strenght, this had only begun.