Adventurous Asche

"Where should I put 'em?"

You motion absently towards a clean space on the desk beside you as you looked over the papers arrayed in front of you. Some of the words were obscured behind a sparse trail of crimson stains, hardly enough to keep you from reading their content but it made you frown all the same. The expression was minuscule, barely a twitch, as you perused the citizen roster from the relative comfort of the mayor's office. A record of every person who lived in Carona, their profession, their residence... The soft sound of shuffling papers rustle in the otherwise dead silent room, revealing even more information. Partially constructed family trees, records of purchase, taxation and royal tribute, appointments and notes.

Large amounts of funds were being pressed into, and subsequently out of, Carona through the guards. The recorded rates from previous ledgers correlating with the exchanges on the paper in your hands. Coin for coin, a total was raised and then split 99-1, composed of steadily rising fees being slid into place over the last decade.

"Find anythin' yet?"

You place the records aside, hands refilling with the newly brought sheaf of paper. Blueprints, maps, schematics... The papers glow palely under the moonlight streaming in, highlighting your unblinking sea-green eyes as they scanned the contents. The paper crinkles as your eyes close in brief relief. "Yes." You murmur, handing the blueprints back to the simple demihuman who had been acting as your aid for the past several days. "Ya want me to put 'em back?" Kara asked quizzically, "It's a pain gettin' in there, y'know?"

Turning back, you level a flat look towards her as your continue to gather the remaining records spread about the desk. "I'm goin, I'm goin..." she muttered, shrinking away from you after she took the papers and slipping back out of the door. You watch the empty frame she left through for a few moments more before glancing over the red stained papers. You couldn't exactly put these back anymore, not without raising suspicions, but at the same time you didn't particularly have any use for them now. The one who held your heart hadn't requested anything more than locating the Tier family in order to find information on their cousin.

"m'done. Put 'em back where I found 'em." Kara quietly re-entered the room, one ear lazily twitching as you glanced at her. "...What? Did you want 'em somewhere else?"

"No." you answer shortly, tucking the papers away as a cool night breeze drifted through the open office window. "We're finished here." you nod towards the window, the way you had entered, and now the way you'll be leaving. "Leavin' the body here?" Kara sniffed, amber eyes drifting down to the crumpled form at your feet. You pause, a schism of thought freezing you in place.

Why would you care where the body was? But if you left it here, it would cause a commotion. Did the commotion matter? If it inconvenienced you heart's keeper, then it would. No, there was more to be done. They still served a purpose to you.

"Bring it."
____

You are Asche. You had no name, no need for one, until you met Ariel Valen. There were terms used to describe you, poetic epitaphs which refer to you, but all of them were deemed too complicated. You were content to forget them, they held no meaning to you, but-

'Everyone needs a name. It'd be too sad if no one knew who you were.'

-Ariel Valen had insisted. Thus, your name is Asche. Just Asche. With that name came change, constant and tumultuous; In the end, lethal. The first person to have ever called them-self your friend was dead, a failure you can never forgive yourself for. You had given her yourself, everything you had. Entrusted everything to the constantly smiling girl who had energetically lifted you up after everything had ended. Had nurtured you, even though you explained there was no point. Had held faith in you, even when you tried to tell her you were broken. In a word, she was... Indomitable.

Pity that word wasn't 'Invincible', or maybe she would still be here.

After she had died, there was a void left to you. An emptiness that had reminded you of the bleak state you had only just left, which beckoned you return to it. Only now do you understand what it was. Only since she'd picked you up did you realize how far you had fallen. Meeting Ariel Valen had blessed you with that, and cursed you with the ever increasing weight of this burden.

And then Irue had taken you. At the precipice to the edge, the heart that Ariel had worked so hard to nurse began to beat for her sibling. Your life, your purpose, in the wake of loss only the two of you understood, you dedicated yourself to the one who so dearly held on to you.

For ten years since then, you had watched your heart's keeper grow. The wounds from back then had never fully healed, not for either of you, and you began to explore the cursed gift that Ariel had left to you. Irue helped you cope, supported you when you started to crack. Even if it was with awkward, inefficient attempts to soothe, the effort grounded you. Solidified a sense of self that gave you a reprieve long enough to adapt. You tempered yourself, under the pressure and crucible, because you were already broken once. You refused to shatter like that again. This time, this time at least, you would become strong enough to never fail again.

When the day of the Rite had finally come, you felt the winds of change stirring once more. A veritable typhoon brewing in the wake of the person who held your heart.
____

Your fingers twitched, an attendant who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time dropping coldly to the brambled floor of the forest surrounding Carona. "What's our count at now?" Kara hummed thoughtfully, her tail swishing to the side calmly as she looked out over the expanse of bodies which openly littered the darker recesses of the surrounding. "Y'know what this'll do, don'tcha?"

You crane your neck up towards the lazy demihuman towering over you, nodding calmly in affirmation. "Seventeen." You supply the answer to the demihuman's question as you turn your back to the open air graveyard which had been expanding since the two of you arrived in Carona. "Seventeen... Eh?" Kara whistled lowly, following after you without batting an eye. "Usually I'm the monster..."

Civilians, guards, maids, merchants. The array of bodies being left behind transcended simple social structure, a monument to indiscriminate necessity.

"There will be trouble." you warned the demihuman as you set off towards a particularly distant outskirt of Carona. She cracked her neck, a bestial smile stretching her lips back to reveal the fangs hidden beneath. "Something interesting where we're goin' next?" she asked, nose already drifting to the air.
____

A long standing family of beastkeepers for House Valen, the Tier family had been respected and affluent serfs within the noble domain; A rarity considering their profession normally amounted to little more than herders of livestock and pets. To be a beastkeeper for House Valen, however, meant something else entirely. Caring for, looking after, and interacting with the often terrible and awesome beasts which that esteemed house took for their rites was a herculean task that demanded you be both knowledgeable of creatures who were so fierce as to have the favour of mana intrinsically intertwined with their existence, and strong enough to stand before them.

While there were some exceptions, such as one Clara Valen, whom hunted their own Testament, it was normally the beastkeeper's job to supply the selection to the hopeful initiate. This meant that beyond simply raising and caring for the relatively domestic newborns, it was often necessary for the Tier family to actively go hunting for the monstrous beasts and bring them back alive.

Held away from the public, often held feral and purposefully unbroken in wait for the next potential master to step forward, the Tier estate was a veritable fantastic zoo of heavily restrained disasters.

"...That's a lot of fire." Kara noted as you approached. Her hands were shaking with each step, eyes wide and attentive. "We too late?"

"Yes." The commotion ahead of you resonated in you with each animalistic cry. The fighting that had consumed the estranged Tier estate had little to do with the beasts they held, so much as the assailants who had been sent under cover of night. The flames that lit up the kennels like a beacon in the night were both plausible deniability, and bombs simply waiting to go off. All it would take is a single break in containment to turn a human's war into a beast's rampage, and then merely a stone's toss from here to Carona. "Anything I should know, then?" Kara breathed heavily, her muscles tensing.

"Irue needs the Tier heirs alive."

"...And the fire guys?"

"No."
____

"Rachael Tier." You greet the terrified girl placidly, a single body slumping to its knees before you just moments before you shrug it out of the way. Crimson coats your maid's uniform, unblinking sea-green eyes illuminated in the fires. "Y...You're that maid!" recognition sparks in her voice, vague but desperate. "Does that mean Caylen's here?!" You shake your head, instantly crushing the budding hope in the girl's eyes. "Do you know what's going on then? Why are we being attacked?"

"Orders." The Mayor's orders, specifically. Passed to him by someone further up, from a place very far away. "I will take you to safety."

"I.. I can't go. Not yet!" Rachael rejected you immediately, "Lim ran to the kennels when the fire started, if she gets hurt then-" A bone jarring crash erupted from behind you, an entire building being reduced to rubble in the split second it took for the hulking frame of it's inhabitant to emerge.

Nearly longer than the barn which had housed it, with deep purple skin and pitch black fur, a titanic four-legged engine of rippling muscle loosed a deafening roar as it reared back and nearly blocked your sight of the moon with the two curved horns which jutted forward from its face. "The Behemoth got free?!" You blink, glancing back at the thing which defied all reason. It stood imposingly, overlooking the surrounding estate. Perhaps if you cared more, you would wonder why it was here, or how it had been kept restrained, but none of those things really concerned you.

"I got it." Kara rolled her shoulder anxiously, a shudder running down her body from head to tail as she started to wander off. "You find that Lim person and get out of here, yeah?"

You tilted your chin up in acknowledgement, though the demihuman likely wouldn't see it. You doubted she was even paying attention after she had started walking off, anyway. Turning back to Rachael, you held your hand out pointedly. "What... Where is she..." The ground shook, nearly knocking you to your knees in the resulting shockwaves that cut the Behemoth's roar of challenge short. Rachael needed no more encouragement to take your hand and get moving as Kara engaged the aptly named monster.
____

If it hadn't taken you so long to get information, maybe you could have prevented this. Intercepted the assailants, or curbed the order. Maybe the Tier estate, and the beasts within, wouldn't have been subjected to this without so much as a warning... But your task was simply to find the Tiers in order to try and locate Caylen for Irue. Possibilities of what could have been swirled stubbornly, but found no shred of guilt or concern to latch on to between yourself and the stupidly grinning demihuman beside you.

Rachael and Lim stood with the remains of their family, collectively mourning their loss - of home, of beast, of family. To them, the two of you were saviours. Miraculous guardians who had appeared at the last moment and saved them from a fate even worse than what they had suffered. In time, they would help you - Tell you what they knew of Caylen's whereabouts - But before then, there was only misery and recovery ahead of them.