The Vaen'ka: part 5

A history of a monster

This is my ongoing scifi / fantasy / crime fiction serial. New chapter every week.

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: Lola Styles has been violently attacked while investigating a series of murders in the city state of Lairn. Her attacker was a vicious creature known as a vaen’ka, long thought extinct…

Somewhere on Palinor.
25 years ago.

Downing another pint, Ceilhur gasped for air and slammed his tankard down on the table. “We need a name!” he shouted at the man sat opposite, raising his voice above the din of the packed tavern.

“A name?” the other man laughed, his large frame rocking. He tore at the last scraps of meat on a bone he was holding. His other arm was draped over a cute girl that looked to be half his size. “What do we need a name for?”

“How are people going to hire us if we don’t have a name? They won’t know who to call.” Ceilhur raised his hand and moved it from left to right, as if writing words in the air. “’The Monster Hunters’.”

The look on his friend’s face wasn’t subtle. “That’s crap,” he said. “Too obvious.”

“Alright,” Ceilhur said, tapping his hands on the table. “Alright, how about ‘The Blades’?”

“Also crap.”

“You got anything better?”

He pulled another chunk of meat from the bowl in the centre of the table. “Nope.”

“The Blades it is, then.”

“Maybe ‘The Two Blades’.”

“I thought your sister was joining us?”

“I told you, no. It’s too dangerous.”

“Maybe when she’s older, then,” Ceilhur said, winking. “’The Three Blades’! It’s got a ring to it.” He pushed back his stool and got to his feet. “I’ll get the beers in. I tell you, Halbad Gabreith, this is the start of something beautiful.”

The cold wasn’t much of an inconvenience to Ceilhur, being of aen’fa blood. More of a challenge was the ice that blanketed the peninsula, which had been difficult enough to traverse when they were hiking towards the lepocanth’s burrow. Slipping was a constant peril, not to mention the invisible crevasses that revealed themselves only when stepped upon.

Those concerns were largely absent from his mind as he rode on the back of the lepocanth, gripping its long, thick, wiry fur as it bounded across the frozen plain. Halbad was somewhere behind, but the lepocanth’s bounding was far faster than his axe-wielding companion.

Holding his grip with one hand, he retrieved a climbing piton from his belt, positioned it above the creature’s hide and bashed it in with his gloved hand. The lepo shrieked and changed course. Ceilhur took another piton and embedded it a few feet away. They both held firm, even as blood began to turn the white fur to red. Attaching his climbing rope, Ceilhur released his hold on the lepo’s back and allowed himself to slide down its side until he was hung beneath the beast, only inches from the ice as it raced along. The stench was deeply unpleasant, but he shut it from his mind as he pulled his blades and sliced at the tendons in the lepo’s front legs.

Another shriek and it swerved, then stumbled, and Ceilhur only managed to hit his rope release just in time. He thumped to the ice, narrowly avoiding being trampled by the racing lepo, which was still barrelling onwards mostly from its own momentum. Ceilhur rolled and rolled, skittering across the ice, until he managed to stabilise his movement and rise to his feet, blades still in hand.

The lepo slowed and turned, limping now, growling and rasping at him as it turned. It wasn’t going anywhere, which meant a fight.

Ceilhur looked over his shoulder, back towards the cave in the distance: a small black dot was growing larger, but not fast enough. He’d have to handle this by himself.

He sheathed the blades and took out his preferred weapon: a tiger claw, a modified weapon from Mid-Earth that he’d adapted to his own needs. It was held in the palm, fingers through ringlets like a knuckleduster, but with five curved knives protruding from the knuckles. Ceilhur enjoyed the irony of defeating monsters with a weapon that was inspired by the claws of such beasts.

Slowed considerably by its front legs no longer functioning properly, the lepo lumbered towards him, its sheer mass still presenting a threat, not to mention its oversized front teeth. What Ceilhur lacked in raw strength he more than made up for in speed and agility, inflicting multiple fatal wounds on the beast without it laying a single paw on him.

Its breath steaming into the frigid air, the lepo stumbled a few more steps, swiping futilely at its hunter, then it collapsed onto the snow and ice. The great body of the beast heaved up and down as it took its final breaths.

Crunching on snow announced Halbad’s laggardly arrival. “Son of a bitch,” he said, taking his axe from his back. “You had all the fun before I got here.” He started hacking at the lepocanth’s neck. They’d need it to claim the hunter bounty back at the outpost.

The ice ran red. Halbad stepped back, splattered with gore, and retrieved a cigar from a pocket. Holding it between his teeth, he clicked his fingers and generated a small flame. “I love it when a plan works out,” he said, grinning.

15 years ago.

It had gone well. They were now The Six Blades, undoubtedly the most famous monster hunting group on the continent. What had begun as a drunken idea in a tavern late one night had grown into a way of life. They had gathered for a feast, making use of the funds from their most recent hunt.

Ceilhur was most proud of the team itself, which had grown far beyond him and Halbad. Seline had joined her brother, as expected, and much to Halbad’s chagrin. There was Ngarkh, a koth so intimidating that they made other koth seem like mice. Erik Vineroot, a peculiar but highly skilled physologist mage that was especially well suited to their line of work and able to assist in all manner of ways. And the most recent addition, Mave Rolsashi, a visualist mage from somewhere far to the east who was proving invaluable for setting traps.

Ceilhur found Mave intoxicatingly attractive. She didn’t talk of home or why she’d left, quite pointedly focusing every conversation on those around her. The mystery that was her past made her all the more exciting. What was absolutely not in doubt were her skills: a combination of good, old fashioned trap laying, making use of all manner of practical tricks, with a subtle application of visualist magic. She could hide a pit of spikes, or a poised snare, or disguise the team’s presence until they were ready to move.

Six of them. They were more than a group of professionals. The Six Blades was a family, the one Ceilhur had never had. He was an aen’fa, forging his own path, reliant on nobody but his comrades, in service to nobody except the next job. He was not owned. The land was his to explore, his life his own. That they’d been able to offer such freedoms to the others made it all the sweeter. He would never be a house servant, a slave to a rich human. He would never crawl the streets for scraps or need to hide in the forests.

He was his own man.

“To all of us,” he said, raising a toast.

“The best damned hunters in the west,” Halbad said, thumping the table.

Seline downed her beer and belched.

Erik smiled appreciatively, quietly sipping at a glass of wine.

Ngarkh roared, no doubt terrifying the punters on the ground floor below. A small, controlled flume of plasma lit the room with a bright glow.

Mave gestured with her hands and what appeared to be a miniature sequence of fireworks erupted just above the length of the table.

12 years ago.

The reports had been vague, a consequence of there being no living witnesses. People were dead in the town of Polthacki, hacked to pieces and the bodies left in ritualistic piles, but nobody had survived to provide a useful report.

They knew only that it must be a monster.

Polthacki was far to the west on the coast of the Tortaro region, which most likely meant it was the Mer. There hadn’t been an incursion by the sea-dwellers for decades, but cruelty and violence was certainly well within their historical repertoire. The town was of middling size, a typical small port for resupplying on the way to somewhere more important. Always new people coming and going, and a faint air of lawlessness to the proceedings.

With so little to go on, it was an unfortunate waiting game. They needed another attack to generate a fresh trail that could be followed. They’d been paid half up front by the town council, who were desperate to avoid the place becoming a no-go area for passing ships, which had at least made their stay a pleasurable one.

The call arrived in the early morning, long before the sun rose. A hammering on the door to his room at the inn they’d rented. It was Mave, looking perfect, as always, and already fully armoured and ready to go.

“New attack, by the docks. Sounds like it happened in the last hour.”

Ceilhur had slept in his gear. He grabbed his coat, sheathed his various blades and followed her into the corridor. The others were already assembled.

The Six Blades.

The monster, whatever it was, wouldn’t last to the morning light.

They tracked it down to a warehouse a short distance from the latest attack. It wasn’t a Mer, or anything else they’d previously encountered.

“I think it’s a vaen’ka!” called Mave, alarm in her voice.

The creature was somewhere in the ceiling above, darting from beam to beam. It was fast. Erik’s blood dripped from its claws.

“Can’t be,” Halbad shouted, “they’re extinct!”

Erik groaned and propped himself up against a wall. “I can barely move,” he said. “I fear that Mave is correct. My abilities have absolutely been diminished. Be careful.”

“Make sure he’s not going to die,” Ceilhur instructed Seline, then he grabbed hold of Ngarkh’s arm. “Get us up there.” The warehouse floor was littered with crates and objects covered with tarpaulins, making it difficult to see far.

The koth flexed its wings and lifted them up to the rafters. Balancing on the beams was of no consequence to Ceilhur but Ngarkh had to use their wings and tail to maintain any kind of balance. “Where is it?” they said, voice a crackling fire.

Halbad called up. “You got anything?”

It was too dark, even for Ceilhur. Too dark, and too many blind corners obscured by the warehouse’s support frame. The creature had disappeared. The items stored in the warehouse formed a maze on the floor below.

“Vaen’ka, then,” Ngarkh said, “what do they do?”

“They take your magic,” Mave said, walking in step with them, weaving between the boxes and cages on the warehouse floor. “I was terrified of them as a child. But they weren’t meant to be real!”

“They’re real alright,” Halbad said, “but I’d heard they were wiped out centuries back.”

“What do we know about them?” Ceilhur didn’t like going into a fight without knowing the details.

“Don’t let them touch you if you’re a wielder,” Mave said. “Beyond that, I’ve no clue.”

There was a crash from where Halbad had been standing, an explosion of wood and dust and packing materials. Somehow the creature had got past them and moved in on his position.

“I’ve got this,” Ngarkh shouted, dropping from the beam and disappearing into the cloud of debris. The sound of fighting echoed around the warehouse.

Too many of them in such tight quarters would only complicate matters. “Do you need assistance?” Ceilhur shouted.

“Just be ready in case it gets past us,” came Halbad’s voice. “I don’t want it escaping into the town.”

There was a burst of flame, the tell-tale plasma sparkle of a koth’s fire breath. It caught on the surrounding warehouse stock, the flames licking up towards the ceiling and throwing the warehouse into a sudden mix of light and shadow.

“Please do try not to burn the whole place down,” Erik called from back near the entrance, where he was still being treated by Seline. “They will take it out of our fees.”

Ceilhur perched overhead, crouched on the beam, ready to leap down if needed. The vaen’ka, if that’s what it was, had seemed to be the size and shape of a typical human or aen’fa, so shouldn’t prove much of a challenge for Halbad and Ngarkh working together, now that they had it engaged.

There was a cry from Mave, who had moved to cover the far end of the warehouse, the sound abruptly silenced. Ceilhur whipped his attention back to where she’d been, in time to see her being lifted, dragged up the wall by another creature.

“There’s another one!” he shouted, up on his feet and racing along the beams. Glass shattered and the creature and Mave disappeared out of a skylight. She must have been taken by surprise: none of them had expected more than one vaen’ka, as everything had pointed towards a single monster.

Reaching the far end of the warehouse, Ceilhur jumped, grabbed the window frame and hauled himself onto the roof. He was vaguely aware of the shattered glass cutting at his palms, but the movement of the vaen’ka leaping to an adjacent building caught his attention. It was strong, that much was certain, able to keep hold of Mave while still moving unencumbered.

Ceilhur pursued. The others would catch up once they’d dealt with the first creature.

The vaen’ka was fast. It took him the length of three buildings to catch up with his quarry, Ceilhur immediately launching into an attack and aiming a blade at the vaen’ka’s neck. It dodged the attack, then flung Mave from the rooftop.

She fell, crumpling to the ground below, not moving.

Fighting with more urgency than ever, Ceilhur worked through his tactics, honed from years of monster hunting. The vaen’ka was faster than him, stronger, and seemed to anticipate his every move. It looked like a female aen’fa, he realised, now that he was close, but its body was elongated and its face warped, only vaguely covered by what must have once been clothes. With each attack he realised it was tricking its physical position, presumably casting some form of visualist spell to throw off his aim. Aen’fa couldn’t wield magic, but this creature was something else.

Mave pressed on his mind, still lying on the ground below, needing his help. He had to get to her, but he couldn’t do so without first dispatching the creature. That conflict distracted him, pulled his attention away, and that’s what gave the vaen’ka an opening, its claws impaling his chest as they both tumbled from the roof’s edge to the street below.

The impact knocked the breath from his lungs and he could feel the creature’s claws scraping at his insides. He scrabbled for a weapon, but the vaen’ka stomped on his hands, pinning them to the floor.

Looking to the side, he saw Mave’s body, inert, her eyes lifeless. He almost didn’t recognise her, the visualist spell that she must have always had up having faded. She was older, more weathered, somehow even more beautiful.

The vaen’ka tore its ragged shirt away, revealing a pale grey skin, and ran a claw across its own chest. Blood poured and it crouched above Ceilhur, the fluid dripping into his wound, the creature’s blood mingling with his own. He felt a burning rush around his body, as if being poisoned. Unable to move or resist, Ceilhur fixed his gaze on Mave, and waited for the end.

He felt a rush of air and the vaen’ka’s head fell from its shoulders, skittering across the alleyway. Her body slumped onto his, only to be dragged away by Halbad. He knelt and grasped at Ceilhur’s hand. “Stay strong, my friend,” he said, “stay strong. Seline will be here. Stay alive.”

It took a month before Ceilhur could leave his bed. It should have been longer, by all rights, but his body was healing faster than he’d expected. Seline couldn’t explain it, nor could the local doctor.

They left Polthacki and began the journey back towards the north. Only five of them remained. “Don’t change the name,” Ceilhur said to Halbad, his voice still rasping, his lungs not quite back to capacity. “We’ll be The Six Blades forever. We’ll remember Mave. Never forget her.”

Halbad had put a firm hand to his shoulder. “Never forget, brother.”

One night, Ceilhur woke with a fever.

Sweat poured from him as he raised himself and looked about the camp. The fire had gone out hours earlier. He still had the pain in his chest, but he could at least move with much of his old agility. Something gnawed at him: he was voraciously hungry, as if he hadn’t eaten for days. Moving quietly through the camp so as not to wake the others, he cracked open one of their supply chests and retrieved a chunk of bread and one of the boiled eggs they’d bought from a farm they’d passed on the road.

They did nothing to sate his hunger. He needed more. Glugging from his water pouch was not enough. He wasn’t thirsty, at least not for that. There was a craving, an urge, that he couldn’t quite identify.

Perhaps sleep would cure it. He moved back towards his camp bed, feeling dizzy. Some rest was all he needed. Seline was fast asleep, snoring loudly. He stood next to her, staring down, observing the pulse in her neck, the undulations of her chest.

No, that wasn’t quite right. It was too measly.

Padding across the grass, he leaned over Erik, also happily dreaming. Ceilhur reached out a hand, felt an electricity pass between them, like the first bite of a fresh apple. He placed a hand on Erik’s forehead, then two, clasping the mage’s face. A rush of exhilaration, a flood of power that sent shivers along his spine and raised the hairs on his arms. Erik moaned but didn’t wake, his breathing slowing.

The blade of a throwing axe appeared at Ceilhur’s throat.

“Stop,” said Halbad.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Stop, now.”

With some effort, Ceilhur pulled away from Erik, stumbling backwards in the dark. A power thrummed through his fingers.

Halbad’s arm was outstretched, the axe pointed at him as the two men circled each other. “What were you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Ceilhur said, “I couldn’t sleep.”

“What were you doing to Erik?”

Halbad took a step closer and Ceilhur responded reflexively, flinging out his arm. There was a pulse of energy and Halbad was thrown backwards ten feet, landing in a heap. Ceilhur clenched his fists, feeling nauseous, his muscles buzzing with anticipation.

He took a final look at his comrades, at Halbad struggling to his feet, then he turned and ran into the night.

10 years ago.

Ceilhur fled to the wilds, far from any settlements. By being alone he could minimise the damage he would cause. By removing himself from civilisation, he would pose no risk.

He fed on magic-rich animals, those that used innate powers to navigate or hunt or survive. It was a paltry diet, but it kept him sane, and alert. Leaving it too long between feeds caused the headaches to return, the desperate ache to feed. His nutrition was wielding, and he needed a constant supply of it. He was aen’fa, or had been, and by birth could not wield magic. He was also vaen’ka, which gave him the ability to steal magic from others. It was not a choice, but a necessity. He knew he would die without it. He had to take, in order to survive.

And so he hunted for animals that could keep him going, but the hunger never abated. What remained of Ceilhur kept him in the wilderness, bound him to the far lands away from cities and towns and villages. He was still a monster hunter, fighting himself every waking moment. His body transformed slowly, becoming stronger, faster, his fingers turning to black claws, his eyes sunken and dim, the angles of his bones more severe.

He maintained the safe, hollow existence for years, until a travelling wizard on his way to Lairn became lost in a storm, his horse straying from the path into the rocky hills that had become Ceilhur’s home.

The wizard did not survive the encounter.

Neither did the last vestiges of Ceilhur. He was lost, no longer the man that had dreamt of making a difference, saving lives and turning a tidy profit.

All that remained was the vaen’ka.

---

References

There’s two previous chapters you might want to check out in relation to today’s:

• Part 3 of the ‘Creatures’ storyline introduced the Six Blades back in March 2022. They did of course then show up in the rest of that story.

• Two years later I followed that up with a bonus chapter, ‘Ellenbrin’s monster compendium’ (March 2024). It’s lots of fun, and marks the point when I’d locked in where I was headed with the vaen’ka plot that is now playing out.

Meanwhile.

On Tuesday it was reported that the UK government was proposing watering down copyright laws to allow AI tech firms to steal as much art and human creation as possible.

This is, as Laszlo Cravenworth would say, bullshit.

There are numerous issues, the most obvious being:

• It’s unclear why huge corporations should get a copyright exemption, which will aid them in developing products that will directly compete with the humans they’re stealing from.

• The proposes ‘opt out’ scheme for copyright holders is, again, bullshit. Opt outs are only employed when everyone knows that nobody would actually choose to opt in. This is why you have to opt in to marketing emails and website T&Cs and so on. The opt out is the tool of those who lack a decent argument.¹

• Large corporations have spent decades litigating against individuals for copyright infringement, whether it’s from selling bootleg DVDs, downloading mp3s, cracking DRM on games and so on. Yet they’re now turning around and asking to be allowed to do the same thing but in an industrial scale.

• Whether you like or use AI isn’t the issue here. AI has potential, and could be a valid and useful contributor to society. Strong copyright laws will enhance those legitimate uses, rather than ushering in the crypto-scam brigade.

The arts and media world yesterday fairly unanimously rejected the proposals. The TL;DR, if you don’t have time to read the article, is “this is bullshit”.

Ed Newton-Rex over on Bluesky has a very useful thread outlining steps that UK citizens can take to object to the proposals. If you’re in the UK, I highly recommend writing to your MP.

👍

Author notes

You have no idea how hard it is to spell Ceilhur. I had to do a search and replace for ‘Cailhur’, because apparently my brain could not wrap itself around a name it had made up only earlier in the week.

This chapter seemed like a good idea at the time. It would add in a slight buffer between the attack on Lola and finding out what actually happens to her. We’d also get some context and find out about the vaen’ka’s background, while also learning more about the Six Blades.

Those are all good reasons to do it.

I’d forgotten that these one-off chapters that dart through the timeline and focus in on a guest character tend to be a lot of work. For a single chapter it requires setting up a new character with some depth, defining new locations, and generating an engaging character arc that can play out within a single chapter.

It’s exhausting.

Also a ton of fun, of course, and I’m pleased with how this turned out. I was fortunate that the timing of this one happened to land with me having some pre-Christmas time off, though, otherwise it would have been major crunch time.

This chapter, more than many, really leans into TV-style pacing. Scene lengths are much closer to those of a typical 30-minute TV show. There’s less introspection than normal, and more action. A lot of story is whipped through in a short space of time. Triverse has been slower paced than my previous projects, so it’s fun to occasionally dip into this kind of rapid flow territory.

We also, at last, get an answer as to why the Six Blades are called the Six Blades, despite only having five members. It was Ceilhur’s wish all along, after Mave’s death. Sometime after Ceilhur’s departure and exile, Ellenbrin would have joined the team, making it back up to five. After that, Halbad was probably content to leave it as a mystery. Ceilhur was all about the marketing, right from the start, after all.

Structurally, it’s all getting a bit inception. This is a flashback nested within Lola’s flashback, telling of events that Lola couldn’t possibly know about. The Lola flashback has never been a 100% representation of what she’s telling Clarke and the others, of course: she wouldn’t go into detail about Pylpo and Daryla, for starters, especially with Holland in the room. Lola recounting what’s happened was only ever a way in and out, though: these actual flashback chapters are not in any way ‘narrated by’ Lola.

We’ll go back up a level in that inception dive next week, to find out what’s happened to Lola and Daryla. Fingers crossed, eh?

1. Someone pointed out that organ donation is opt out. It’s a good point and a valid exception. I’m sure there are others. It’s a rare case where most people would happily opt in, but don’t know about it, or don’t know how to do it. The opposite, in many ways, of this copyright issue.