Yvelden Knight

Yvelden Knight: Wisps of past

The world is no longer what it once was. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I have watched them trample the common man beneath their feet. Under the cloak of democracy, an alliance of five crime lords, known as the Dragespyre Syndicate, continues its reign of terror. Sworn by reciprocal oaths of fealty to each other, they are the voice of business tycoons and noble families, behind the shadows. Their name is only spoken in whispers by the wealthy elite. A man, named Hector Comstock, being at the centre of it all. The year is 2099; and the winds of change have finally begun to blow our way. This is the story of me Gawain Ashweaver, a 20-year-old – ordinary waiter by day and crime fighter by night.

I come from a family of assassins known as the People of the Sun. At the age of 10, I was trapped in a forest wildfire. It was then that I manifested signs of superhuman stamina, agile strength and healing powers. I lost my life saving a white tiger and its cubs in a wildfire started by a Pyromancer. I was revived with nine lives and entrusted with unique powers as a reward for my sacrifice. My family calls it a gift by the Heart of the Forest but it has always been a curse for me. My body has gone through countless mutations, each more painful than the last. Rage yields sudden transformation within my body and physical appearance.

When infuriated, I begin revealing feline features that include white fur with gray stripes. My tailbone grows into a fully formed tail just as my nails grow into curved sharpened claws. I evolve into a stocky version of a humanoid cat with blue eyes, leaving my usual willowy self with black eyes into oblivion. I have learned to blend in with the society while working at a Japanese themed restaurant. The employees wear Tengu masks on one half of their face, as appreciation for folklore, which has attracted several mutated souls like myself here. Letting my emotions spiral out of control can spell death for us all. The Dragespyre Syndicate hunts mutations, through the government, in order to conduct experiments on us in underground labs. We are considered to be abominations. Anyone would be pleased to be rid of us all.

After all, who wants a beast as their superior? Man has always feared what he could not comprehend. The Church of Light just declared us as enemies of the state and put a bounty of 300,000 credits on our heads. If not for Alvin Wang, my mentor, I would have had been someone’s lab rat long ago. Alvin serves as a manager for Raijin’s Ramen, the restaurant where I work at. As a man in his early 50s, he shows no signs of aging. His full beard makes him out to be a bastion of brawn traits. My family may have taught me the stealth of an assassin but it was Alvin who taught me how to keep my emotions in check. A paragon of honesty and tranquillity, he has raised me into who I am today. With an affinity for cooking gourmet meals and managing employees efficiently, he was born to be a manager here.

Yvelden Knight: Embers of future

A zephyr blows through a ruby-red wind chime, emanating melodies. Raijin’s Ramen awaits its first visitor of the day as the cascading wind chime lucently scintillates at the entrance. The gusts gyrate with a will of their own, summoning unfathomable calamites woven by the threads of fate. They foretell a thunderstorm to come later this day. They augur idle traffic on asphalt roads in Yvelden. They bide, refusing to unleash rains upon primordial seas.

They bring a pilgrim.

He’s not a regular. His striking appearance makes for an ideal first impression. He hails from wealth. He wears a bright yellow tie with a suit underneath that raincoat. An ironed suit without a grain of dust raises suspicions of a business tycoon. He is in his late 20s. He has vigour in his strides as he ascends Raijin’s Ramen’s stairs. His tranquil aura conceals his soul. He has inscrutable opaque eyes. The kind that any speculative maiden would fawn over.

But they are the kind that would intimidate the wary.

He enters, takes a seat and asks for a spicy seasoned curry. When I return with his order, I find Alvin seated opposite to him. And when I place warm sustenance before him, he does not even take a bite, much less look at it. His blue eyes are locked with that of my mentor’s.

“Aren’t you going to eat, my friend?” Alvin smiles with his eyes closed.

“Why, the customs of hospitality decree that a host partake before his guest.”

“If that is what it takes to convince you that the meal isn’t poisoned.”

Alvin takes a spoon, churning the gourmet cuisine and savouring its taste in his mouth. The stranger watches him. His elbows resting above the ornate table, his face is hidden behind clasped hands. A sapphire ring boasting sterling silver rests on his left middle finger.

“I’m searching for an outlaw. A prisoner who escaped three decades ago. A Chinese man with a scar on the back of his right hand. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?”

The entire staff at Raijin’s Ramen wears white gloves as part of their attire. I do not recall seeing Alvin with his gloves off ever before. If this was his poker face, he was demonstrating an excellent bluff. He had not flinched at all.

“This city has a noteworthy reputation of seizing and ending mutations. If the government does not hunt them down, the Syndicate does. And once captured, they are not heard from again.” He continues to smile. “You expect me to believe that someone managed to escape from an underground fortress and lived within Yvelden, unharmed, for thirty years?”

“This mutant is a rank S threat. He has the ability to alter dimensions, reverse time and distort space. It would be folly to let a manifestation of God roam free.” Hints of sombre notes are present in the stranger’s voice.

“Let me enlighten you with a parable. Is a man not entitled to his freedom? No, says the feudal monarch. He owes it to me. No, says the deluded chauvinist. He owes it to his people. No, says the religious maniac. He owes it to God.” Alvin pauses. “You all pretend to work for a higher calling, a noble cause. But, in the end, who do you really serve? Projecting your ideologies and forcing them on others is no less than slavery. We want them to be the same but truth and ideals can be very different.”

“The Divine Hands have deemed these hands to be worthy of warfare. If I hesitate to take up arms, the next man will. There will always be a war.” The stranger pulls out a pair of honed chain blades from his coat. “Come now, let us be done with this farce already, 9D.”

“You were never one to comprehend reason, Hector.” My mentor chuckles lightly as he begins to levitate with his legs crossed in meditation. “If the mind is like an incarnadine candle, the heart is like the aureate Sun.”

The edges of inanimate, physical objects begin to pixilate into monochrome cubes. Beams of light morph into darkness and we are teleported to a mesmerizing, neon-blue clock tower.

“You can’t save your restaurant like this, 9D. The Pyromancer and my Reapers are ready to torch that cursed sanctuary if they don’t hear from me in the next three minutes.”

“I know.” Alvin floats higher. “That’s why I switched the restaurant with this clock tower.”

Dumbstruck, it takes a while before I realize he teleported the entire location instead of us. As I turn to my left, I see the Pyromancer and a horde of four Reapers standing next to me, just as confused. Oh, crap.

Hector throws chain blades at his opponent with a clang. They miss but it just encourages him to throw another curve. A blast of flamethrower nearly scorches my face.

“You shall burn in fire for your sins.” The Pyromancer howls as the Reapers run towards me with their scythes drawn.

“This battle was long over before it even began.” I roar.

Within a matter of seconds, my appearance is transformed into that of a white tiger. I kick the scythe out of the first Reaper’s hand and stab the android’s chest with it. I dodge the second incoming attack with a backflip and decapitate it swiftly with my claws. The unique polymer in their synthetic skin is hard to pierce. I yank a scythe back from a Reaper’s chest.

“I will bow to no Kings or Gods.” The range of Hector’s venomous chain blades increases with each throw. “I am the embodiment of Divine Retribution.”

“Is that what I am to you, Comstock?” My mentor dodges each strike easily with his eyes closed. “A God?” An aura of psychic energy encapsulates him.

“Do not call me by that name, abomination.” He switches his tactics and commences parkour instead. “I became Yvelden Knight the day I swore to hunt you down.” As he runs across the clock tower’s walls, he passes by me. Clearly I’m not his focus in this battle.

But I have my own strategy and own battle to win. The Pyromancer’s flames are certainly not doing my fur any favours. He’s at an absolute advantage from that range. I need to limit the distance between us and engage him in close combat.

As I dodge the Pyromancer’s erupting flames, the Reapers begin to corner me. They have grown cautious after the first two Reapers that I destroyed. Damned AI. The Pyromancer throws jets of berserk flames across edges of the clock tower. Within minutes, the confines of the room are blazing hot, a scorching stadium of wildfire.

This is almost nostalgic. The burning forest. I look up and I see my trainer evading amidst a tornado of chain blades. The Yvelden Knight is in a whirl. I have never seen anyone battle so ferociously. But something feels amiss amongst this. If what he said was true, why has not my trainer reversed time or put an end to this futile fight?

His dodges become slower with each passing second as charcoal-black smoke emanates from the infernal fires. Amidst all the confusion, I see one of forged weapons cut my trainer on his right cheek. The Yvelden Knight growls vociferously.

“Do it! NOW!!!”

To my horror, I watch the Pyromancer pull out a dark ball from his fire-proof armour. They are going to self-destruct themselves. He almost seems to be grinning underneath that iron hazard mask. He throws the time bomb in mid-air and points one of his red-hot glowing flamethrowers at it. I stride, speeding past the Reapers in one leap using a single paw.

A nuclear explosion engulfs us all.

Written by Huzaifah Bukhari