(1)
Despite her inclination towards inebriation, Kell was more observant than her comrades gave her credit for. In between drinking whole bottles of strong spirits that she'd pilfered from the crew's hidden stash, Kell spent her time watching Nul and Roran as they went about their business.
She watched as Nul painstakingly deciphered General Ahndor's etchings. She watched as Nul etched Roran with his first godspell, a strange thing that made him impossible to defeat at games of chance. And she watched as Nul molded a perfectly good sword into a strange lump of steel that was vaguely hand-shaped.
While Nul was an incredibly talented etcher, they were less of a sculptor. Still, after taking careful measurements of Kell's hand and wrist, they spent hours reshaping the metal, molding it as the artist molds clay and forming it into a perfect replica of her hand.
Kell watched Roran too, though he was less interesting. His focus was entirely on Sarah once she came back. As comforting as it was to have the specter of death once more among them, Kell was more interested in the steel appendage that Nul was crafting for her.
Kell was standing on the deck, surprisingly sober given that it was past noon, when Nul approached her.
"How are you feeling?" they asked.
"Fine," said Kell, though she was anything but. The crew had moved their stash of good booze and started hiding it around the ship in smaller hiding spots, making it difficult for Kell to get properly drunk.
"Can I borrow you for a minute?"
"You can ask me for a favor anytime, you don't need to pussyfoot around it."
"Right," said Nul, looking away, "Sorry. I uh...I finished the prosthetic."
"You mean my new hand?"
"It's a little more than that. I got carried away with some of the finer details, but I'm finally done. You should be able to use it now."
"Then quit wasting time and slap it on me."
"I can't," said Nul. When Kell glared at them, they hurried to add, "It's activated by a godspell, you need to be the one to attach it."
"Fine, let's go."
Nul took Kell back inside their cabin. The new hand was sitting on the small desk Nul had claimed as their own. It looked boring and simple. It was little more than a hunk of steel molded into a hand. Admittedly, the details were almost perfect. With a little paint, the lump of steel could have passed for a real hand, but Kell was unimpressed. To her, it was just another prosthetic.
"How do I wear it?" asked Kell.
"I've etched it so it will mesh with your existing focus markings. All you have to do is hold it to your stu...to your arm and activate the design."
Kell grunted and grabbed the hand. It was heavy, almost as heavy as a sword. She pressed it against her stump. The ends didn't quite match up. I was round and smooth where her stump was lumpy and had lines of scar tissue crisscrossing it.
Kell splashed a little of her energy into the steel appendage. Nothing happened.
"It ain't working. Now what?"
"Try more," said Nul. "This isn't a normal prosthetic, I've etched it with a godspell. They have a high activation threshold. You'll need to pour a lot of yourself into it to make it work."
Kell rolled her eyes. Of course a simple prosthetic wouldn't do. Nul had to add their own flair into the mix by etching it with special designs and effects. There had been several times when Kell wanted to do away with Nul's extraneous enhancements, and now seemed like a good chance to actually start.
"It will be worth it," said Nul, their eyes never leaving the prosthetic.
Kell grumbled. "Fine, whatever."
She began pouring more of herself into the hunk of steel. Kell had been using focus markings for most of her life at this point. She didn't need to seek out the sigil that would accept her energy. She didn't need to close her eyes and concentrate. She didn't need to imagine a stream of her own life force flowing into the design. All she had to do was let instinct take over and dump energy into the new etching until it did something interesting.
Kell poured more and more of her energy into the new designs until something interesting happened. The world wavered and Kell stumbled. She was covered in goosebumps and the taste of copper entered her mouth. The only time this happened was when she was overextending herself, when she was pushing her etchings despite her body not being able to support them.
Kell staggered backwards before Nul could catch her. She bit her tongue and the world snapped back into place. She'd experienced this feeling before and she wasn't going to show weakness in front of Nul.
Fighting off a wave of nausea, Kell rubbed her face. Wiping her mouth and brushing her hair back, Kell stood upright and put her hands on her hip.
"Now what? Is the etching working?"
Nul stared at her, wide eyed. Their lips were locked in place, stuck halfway between a smile and a gasp.
"It worked," they said, their voice hushed and their tone reverent. "It actually worked."
"I don't feel any different," said Kell. She crossed her arms, tapping her fingers on an elbow. She was still disoriented and fighting herself to not show it. She could feel the drain of an etching but she wasn't about to let Nul know she was struggling. Instead, she scowled at Nul.
After watching her for a moment, Nul said, "Kell, can you redo your ponytail?"
"What, why?" Kell asked. She hated doing her ponytail. Karyn used to do it for her, oiling it into a tidy bundle and tying it with a strip of leather, but since her wife's passing, Kell had either gotten one of the Sunridge people to help her or resorted to tying it up in a loose mess with her single hand.
"Humor me."
"Fine."
Though her head was still spinning, Kell pulled out the tie, closed her eyes, and set about tying her hair back. It had been long enough since she'd done it herself that she had to resort to muscle memory, to movements hammered into since long before she'd met Roran or even Nul.
She combed her hair out with her fingers before gathering it in a tight bundle behind her head. She started wrapping the tie around the pony when Nul said, "Stop moving!"
Kell froze, her eyebrow shooting up in a silent question.
"You're using two hands," said Nul.
"But I only..." Kell trailed off. Nul was right. She was using two hands. One was holding her hair in a pony while the other held the leather tie. It was an action she'd done a thousand times before. One that felt perfectly natural.
In her left hand, the hand that had been forcibly removed by the Uhlaran interrogators, she held her own hair. She could feel the strands against her skin, she could feel the warmth of her own scalp, she could feel the trembling of her own skeleton as she stood there in awe.
"I have a hand."
(2)
Kell let her hair fall loose and held both of her hands in front of her. One was her old calloused hand of flesh and bone. The other was a shimmering mold of steel. The surface was smooth and reflective, moving like a liquid. Each finger moved exactly as it should. There was no stiffness or imperfections. Kell had two perfectly functioning hands.
"I used a godspell to make it work," said Nul. "That's why it was so hard to activate."
"It feels...real."
"It effectively is. The diagrams I used bind it directly to your flesh and your nervous system. I had to make a few adjustments because it's crafted from steel, but it's almost an exact replica of your hand. It should function as your old one did, just sturdier and a little heavier."
Kell flexed her hand, wiggling the fingers and touching her thumb to each fingertip. She could feel the impact and even the pressure of every movement. It felt even more realistic than the donor hand she'd had stitched on. Kell was once more complete.
"How long have you been able to do this?" she asked.
"I could do the basics since we left the hidden library in Uhlara. The godspells were more recent. I used some of the sigils present in Roran's chaos butterfly. I also borrowed a few from Ahndor's markings. I'm just glad it works, I was afraid it might fuse to your arm and catch on fire."
"You thought it might catch on fire?"
Nul shrugged. "One of the risks with using high bandwidth designs. The more energy you dump into them, the more likely they are to explode. It looks like we got lucky with this one. I'm sure it will need some fine tuning, but you should be good to test it out."
Kell snapped her new fingers. They made a clinking sound as steel met steel. It may have felt like flesh, but it was still a metal hand. Curious, Kell pulled out one of her small throwing daggers. Grabbing the blade in her new hand, she squeezed it close. Steel screeched as the small knife folded in on itself, helpless in Kell's mighty grip.
"I'd recommend you be careful when holding things in that hand," said Nul.
Kell grunted and started smoothing the knife back out. It was ruined now, but her steel fingers were still able to smooth it back out into the rough shape of a knife.
"What do you think?" asked Nul.
Instead of answering, Kell went to the corner where she stored her gear and produced a spear. It was one of her good ones, a long spear with a blade made from King's Steel and a flexible haft etched with markings that would make it unbreakable. Kell had won several tourneys with this spear but she'd been unable to wield it since losing her hand.
Spear in hand, Kell left the cabin and went to the deck. The air was crisp and cool, and the sky above was crystal blue. The cloud layer was below the ship, hiding the world from view. Up here, there was the ship and the ship alone.
Kell tossed the spear into her offhand. She squeezed the haft gently, trying to get a feel for how her new hand applied pressure. As her hand squeezed the wood, the wood pushed back. She could feel the grain of the haft and the faint indentations of the etchings. It was just like before.
Slowly, Kell began twirling the spear in lazy circles. She'd expected there to be a learning curve or some sort of hangup in her movements, but there wasn't. The hand moved and acted exactly as it should have. The steel intuitively followed her movements, twisting the spear around and around in a familiar motion.
"The godspell connects the hand directly to your nervous system," said Nul, watching her closely. "Assuming I did everything correctly, the prosthetic should feel and act exactly as your old hand would have. Aside from a few minor details, you shouldn't be able to notice a difference."
Kell grunted. She snapped the spear forward and gripped it with both hands, swinging it around in a powerful arc. Her body tensed and relaxed, the muscles dancing in a familiar pattern. Kell swung again, this time in a hard jab, thrusting the spear forward. Her body sang with the comfort of the old movements. It was a feeling of relief and joy. It was a feeling of coming home. Kell could wield her spear again.
She twirled it around again, pausing to snap and thrust at imaginary opponents. Her feet danced along the deck of the ship, light and fast. She was perfectly at peace with her body and herself.
"How are you feeling?" asked Nul.
"Like I'm finally whole again."
Kell kept going with her forms, working her way back and forth across the deck, battling unseen enemies. Her body was stiff from using shorter weapons and one-handers. She needed to stretch out the muscles again.
"You should spend some time getting used to the hand," said Nul. "Using godspells is taxing, there will be consequences if you're careless."
"It's nothing I can't handle," said Kell.
She didn't care what the consequences were, she had her hand back, she had her spear back. She was once more the legendary Living Storm. Not only that, but she was stronger now. She was more comfortable with a variety of weapons and she better understood her own vulnerabilities.
"If only I had this during the attack," Kell muttered under her breath. If only she'd been faster, if only she'd been stronger, if only she hadn't been so fucking useless, then Karyn and Darling would still be there. They probably wouldn't have bothered joining the war effort at all. All of them would be back at Darling's manor, cozying up in the den and drinking and laughing. They would have been a family, rather than a broken pod of miserable wretches.
Kell moved forward for another strike but something shifted in her body. Her foot hit the deck and kept going, sliding out from underneath her. Kell tried to catch herself but the world spun around her and she fell flat on her ass.
The sky above Kell was spinning in lazy circles and she was hit with a sudden bout of nausea. Nul came and stood over her.
"I told you," they said, "You have to be careful with godspells, they take some time to get used to."
(3)
Kell lost track of time after Nul scooped her up and carried her back to her bunk. At some point, her hand went stiff and fell off. The sudden loss of sensory input was startling. Her body had reacclimated to the hand in mere minutes and the loss was palpable.
Settling into bed, Kell stared up at the ceiling and watched it spin around in circles. She hadn't felt this miserable since she took a warhammer to the face. Her body felt weak and she was starving. The familiar tang of copper clung to her tongue, a sure sign that she'd over extended her etchings...again.
She was used to overdoing it. Kell saw her limits as something to be pushed and broken. But she hadn't exhausted herself this badly since she'd first been etched. Back then she'd been young and stupid and eager to prove herself. She was still stupid, but she had an intrinsic understanding of her etchings now. She knew what her limits were and just how much she could push them. Apparently godspells threw all of her previous experience out the window.
"Are you hungry?" asked Nul.
Kell nodded. Despite the dizziness and mild nausea, she was starving. Sprinting up Mount Vassilis would have been less exhausting.
"How long did it take you to adjust?" asked Kell.
"A week, but I have Akanos to do the heavy lifting for me. Until you and Roran have blades of your own, you'll need to work around your limitations."
"Limitations, huh?"
"Even you have those," said Nul. "I'll go fetch you some food."
Kell tried to flip Nul off as they left but moving her arm was hard and she'd tried to use the wrong one. Having a detachable, yet fully functioning, hand was going to take time to get used to.
After a hearty plate of food and a good night's rest, Kell tried again the next day. It was easier this time. She knew where the activation threshold was for her hand and could feel its drain on her body. She had only been practicing with it for a few minutes when the decorated ass known as Merem came sauntering over. Kell hadn't found a good reason to throw him overboard yet, but she was still looking.
"Well that's a fancy new toy," he said, plastering a fake grin onto his face.
"It's just a prosthetic," said Nul. They had been clear about keeping knowledge of godspells relatively secret. "I'm just glad it works."
"Little miss storm seems plenty happy with it."
"It will do," Kell said, continuing with her exercises. "Do you need something?"
"Sort of," said Merem.
"If you're about to ask for a favor, you can forget it," said Kell. "I don't do anything for free."
"Oh, it's not a favor, I have orders for you three."
Nul sat up, taking interest. Kell paused in her motions and regarded the young captain. His hair was greased back and his uniform was crisp and clean. He had an edge to him but it was brittle. Kell knew a weak man when she saw one.
"What sort of orders?" asked Roran, appearing out of nowhere. Kell assumed Sarah had something to do with his ability to appear in just the right place at just the right time, though she hadn't seen the lyhlim since she'd put on her little ghost show back in King's City.
"We're passing over a battlefield. The enemy has been making unexpected advances and the ground troops are struggling to deal with attacks. There was supposed to be a handful of Champions assigned to them, but they got pulled elsewhere. Since it's in our flight path, we'll be stopping to lend them a hand."
"The soldier's can't handle the heat so they're sending in the real fighters?" asked Kell.
"You can think of it that way if you like. I prefer to think of it as utilizing our resources for maximum effect. Besides, breaking the enemy's advance will look good for all of us. And, if I need to throw in extra incentive, you will all be compensated for your work."
"We should be saving our energy for the big fights," said Nul. "We can't assault the heart of the Esmun Republic if we're licking wounds we gained along the way."
"We'll help," said Roran. "Sorry, Nul, but there's no way around it."
Nul folded their arms and scowled at the lot of them, but said no more on the matter.
Kell merely shrugged and said, "Makes no difference to me. Just tell me who to kill."
"We'll be passing over them now," said Merem. He moved to the railing and the others followed him.
The skies were clear beneath them, giving them an unobstructed view of the landscapes below. There were rolling hills that had once been farmland but were now burned out patches of mud and blood. Temporary fortifications had been built at intervals across the entire landscape.
On one end sat an Imperial encampment, flying the colors of the King's Army. On the other side of the broken and scarred land sat an encampment, surrounded by barricades and dugout trenches, and flying the colors of the Esmun Republic and the Uhlaran Loyalists.
Kell sucked on her teeth as they slowly drifted over the battlefield. She could see the Esmun armies below them, pulling themselves together for another advance. Judging from the hastily built defenses, it looked like they'd been pushing hard for days on end, forcing the King's Army back again and again.
Kell expected to feel some sort of grief or misery. Some emotion that would show she had a single shred of empathy within her. Beside her, Roran looked exhausted, as though the death and misery were a physical weight on him. On her other side, Nul was stoic but quiet, likely thinking about their home province and how they would feel if this nightmare came to their homeland.
Kell, for her part, felt nothing. She was empty. Any grief, compassion, or even anger was gone from her, devoured by the aching hole in her chest where her dearheart had once been. The one person in this world that she had loved and cherished more than anything had been brutally ripped out of her grasp and she was left with an empty chasm instead of a heart.
"We'll set down the ship, let you three off, then provide support from above," said Merem.
Kell looked down at her steel hand. She'd only been wearing it for a few minutes but she could already feel the drain. It was sucking the energy out of her with every passing second. But that meant it was full of power. Her hand was strong, she was strong. She was stronger than she'd ever been.
"Don't worry about it," said Kell.
"I'm sorry, but orders are orders," said Merem.
"No, I mean don't worry about landing the ship," said Kell, and she jumped overboard.
(4)
The faint sound of swearing followed Kell over the railing of the ship. The rush of wind quickly drowned out any other sounds as Kell plummeted towards the earth. She quickly dropped through the cooler altitudes and back down into the reasonably warm summer air.
Her body was alight with goosebumps, both from the freefall and from the use of her godspell. She flexed her steel hand a few times, feeling its strength. She was whole again and she would prove it to everyone floating above her. She would prove it to herself.
The world wavered in and out of existence as Kell activated all of her defensive etchings. Normally it wasn't too big of a draw on her, but in combination with the godspell, it was all she could do to stay conscious.
As her vision cleared, she saw the ground was rushing up to greet her. She was falling faster and faster. At the last second, she rolled over to look up at the sky. The ship had become a small speck above her, hardly visible even in the clear blue sky.
Kell hit the ground with a wet thump, the soft mud squishing beneath her and making a perfect, Kell shaped, imprint. The etchings that hardened her skin prevented anything from piercing her and kept her body stable on impact. The etchings that protected her insides absorbed and diminished the sudden change in velocity so that her organs didn't rattle about and explode within her own body.
Thankfully, none of the weapons strapped to her body had come loose or broken on impact. Her spear was in the mud next to her, whole and intact. Safely on the ground, Kell let some of her defensive etchings die. She needed to balance how much of her energy she was expending, otherwise she might pass out again.
With a wet 'schluck' sound, she pulled herself free from the mud. The ground around her smelled of smoke and was a ruined mess of muddy boot prints. She'd managed to land, almost perfectly, in the middle of the battlefield. Columns of smoke rose both in front of and behind her, marking the different camps. Getting her bearings, Kell brushed off the worst of the mud and began heading towards the Esmun encampment.
Glancing up, she saw two more figures descending through the air, though at a much more subdued pace than she had.
"Wimps," Kell muttered.
Kell tossed her spear from hand to hand. The last time she'd effectively used a two handed spear was in her fight with Phalyn, and that had been a disaster thanks to the weak construction of Uhlaran weapons.
Now, with a proper spear from King's City and two functioning hands, Kell would be able to see whether or not she was capable of fighting at her previous level.
From behind Kell came the sound of footsteps. Roran and Nul had finally caught up to her.
"Stand back and let me do the fighting," said Kell. "I want to see how well this hand holds up."
"You shouldn't push yourself this soon," said Nul. "Using a godspell like this is reckless. I have Akanos to manage and power my etchings for me and even I have to be careful. You need to-"
"We'll watch from a distance," said Roran. "And we'll jump in if anything happens. Otherwise, we'll leave it to you."
It was times like these that Kell remembered why she'd pulled Roran out of the Crucible in the first place. He was smart enough not to pick a pointless fight and knew when to shut up and get out of the way. Kell twirled her spear around and tossed it between her hands again. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear Demetrio scolding her for being so flippant with a two handed spear. Admittedly, unetched fighters couldn't wield weapons the way Champions did. They were restricted by physics. Kell, and those like her, were able to work around those constraints.
Kell neared the Esmun encampment. It was situated at the top of a small hill, giving the enemy the higher ground. A ring of bloody mud circled the hill, creating a makeshift moat. Further up, trenches had been dug out and walls had been thrown up. Despite being tattered and charred, green and brown flags flapped defiantly in the wind.
From the sky, the fortifications had appeared to be thrown together in a hurry, now they just looked dismal. They were enough to funnel any attackers into kill points and to prevent the encampment from being immediately overrun, but they weren't going to do much to keep Kell at bay.
Roran and Nul stopped on either side of Kell, looking up at the encampment with her. There was shouting from within and the sound of movement. The enemy was watching them.
"Right," said Kell, "Back in a minute."
She plowed forward, trudging through knee high muck. It stuck to her boots and trousers, leaving them sticky and miserable. Reaching the other side, Kell shook the worst of the muck off her legs then started climbing up at a subdued pace. Even after Nul's warning, she had decided not to rush this.
An arrow struck the ground near Kell. She hobbled around it and kept an eye on the fortifications above her, watching for more archers. There were only a handful and Kell was easily able to dodge the few arrows they shot at her.
When Kell reached the trenches and spiked barricades, she calmly walked around them, heading straight into the kill points the enemy set up for her. A squadron of heavily armored soldiers awaited her. They held spears at the ready and stood in a defensive formation.
"What," she asked, "All this for little me?"
"We know what you are, Demon!" one of the soldiers spat. He was practically trembling. "We watched you fall from the sky. We know what you are and we aren't afraid."
"Then why is your spear rattling in your hands?"
"Silence!"
Kell shrugged. She was more comfortable speaking with her spear than with her words. Shifting into a fighting stance, Kell gripped her spear with both hands and held it forward. She squeezed the haft with her steel hand, feeling the reassuring outline of its etchings. She was the Living Storm, she was the strongest fighter to walk through the arena. And, one day, she would kill the Kings.