Where have all the good folks gone?
Autumn Blaze was bored, and lonely. This was nothing new, it was her usual state. Though lately she had been feeling it worse than normal. She got the distinct impression that the kirins of her village had been avoiding her more than usual as of late. Not that any of them ever spoke to her, but they would at least nod politely when passing by.
The last few days nokirin had been passing by. She supposed it was kind of to be expected, several had been busy constructing the new house for Winter Mist, who had come of age and needed her own place to live.
None though? That was odd. She'd still see them around town from her vantage point up the mountain, but there did indeed seem to be fewer of them around. There was only a single kirin working alongside Winter.
Idea! Autumn would go down and see if they'd let her help. That'd relieve her boredom, and her loneliness.
Not wanting to arrive empty hooved, she brewed a pot of tea and poured it into a bottle. Wrapping the bottle in cloth would ensure it stayed warm for a while. She grabbed a packet of biscuits, a blanket, some of her tools, and a box of candies. Surely nokirin would turn her away if she showed up with snacks?
The walk down the mountainside sure felt more lonely than usual, and Autumn found herself wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. She wasn't exactly sure why, it wasn't especially cold, and if it had been she could have just lit herself on fire for a bit. No, there was something else that made her feel like shivering. Much like earlier, something about the village felt off.
The other kirins seemed to agree, what other reason would so many have for staying in. She was used to meeting at least a few kirins when walking into the village, but today she met only one.
"Hello Ember!"
The other kirn met her gaze for several seconds before returning the greeting with a nod.
Strangely the gesture didn't bring the sense of comfort and belonging that Autumn was used to. It wasn't the silence, nor the large ax slung across her back, not even that the extent of the conversation was another kirin acknowledging her existence, it was something she spotted in the other kirin's eyes, worry.
This was such an unusual emotion for any kirin to show that it took Autumn aback, but before she could enquire, Ember Spring had already left.
"Okay," Autumn said to herself, feeling the need to break the oppressing silence. It seemed to help. Maybe that was what felt so wrong? Without the other kirins moving about the village was just so quiet. The only thing she heard was the hammering and sawing from Winter's construction work.
As she usually did when she felt lonely, Autumn began to sing.
She sang about the silence of the forest, the beauty of the trees and the open sky. She serenaded the day as she walked, hoping to share her wonder at the world with her surroundings.
With music, the path felt wider, the trees happier and the forest less empty. Singing made everything better.
Before she realized it the journey was over and Winter and the other kirin, Solstice Flare, looked up at the sound of her approach.
"Hiya!" she greeted them, waving her hoof and humming a few happy tones.
The welcome was just as warm as usual, the other kirins eyed her with neutral expressions and then nodded, welcoming her to join them.
"I brought snacks!"
She couldn't be sure, but she thought she noticed a smile in the corner of the other kirins' muzzles, win! They waved for her to join them.
What had started so eerily turned out to be a really nice morning. Autumn, Winter and Solstice worked on the house, raising one beam after the other.
While the two seemed neutral about her singing, they definitely appreciated her snacks and the extra muscle when it came to lifting the heavy wooden beams in place. Autumn felt good, she was contributing and spending time with the other krins. Sure they didn't talk with her, but she could feel they appreciated her being there.
As they worked the house really started to take shape but eventually they ran out of materials. Winter and Solstice simply stopped working, they sat down and waited idly. After a while they opened the box of candy Autumn had brought and consumed its contents.
Autumn herself wasn't sure what to do, so after the candy was gone she felt the need to break the ice.
"So… quiet day today." she commented.
The other two kirins nodded silently.
"We're waiting for more wood, right?"
Another nod, this time a reply rather than a polite acknowledgment.
That seemed to be it, there wasn't much more to do than wait then.
Autumn managed to endure nearly a full 10 minutes of the silent waiting before she couldn't take it anymore.
"Alright," she said, standing up, "I'll go fetch more wood then."
To her surprise the other kirins didn't nod, but instead shook their heads. The gesture was unusual enough to give Autumn pause.
"Really?" she asked, receiving two nods in return. It was at times like these when she especially missed being able to talk to other kirins. The muteness really did make communication harder. Though that was the point though, wasn't it.
"Is it because you sent somekirin out already?"
Winter and Solstice tilted their heads, nodded, then tilted their heads to the side again.
"Okay…" Autumn tried to decipher the response. "So you already sent out somekirin, but they haven't come back yet even if they should have?"
Another nod, this time from Solstice. She caught another flash of worry in the eyes of the two kirins. Clearly she wasn't the only one who found this slightly unsettling.
"Maybe I should go look for her?" Autumn offered.
Solstice shook her head again.
"You don't want me to look for her?" Autumn asked, and Solstice confirmed.
She could clearly see the other kirins were worried now, Winter was fidgeting.
Autumn racked her brain for which kirin could have been sent out. The only one she had seen was Ember, and the kirin had been carrying a felling ax at the time.
"Was it Ember?"
Another nod, this time from Solstice, while Winter just looked down at the ground, clearly unhappy.
A feeling Autumn shared.
"That's odd, I met her on the way here," she told them, "that was several hours ago, shouldn't she be back by now?"
Another pair of nods, and she understood why they were worried. There wasn't much in the surrounding area that could hurt a kirin, but you never knew what dangers lurked in the shadows of a magical forest.
"You think something may have happened to her?"
Both kirins shrugged, but the worried expressions on their faces told a different story.
Autumn didn't like this, not one bit.
"One of us should go look for her then," she exclaimed. "I'll go."
Winter nodded in agreement, but Solstice stood up and shook her head.
The older kirin put a restraining hoof on Autumn's shoulder and shook her head again, then pointed at herself. I'll go.
"Are you sure?" Autumn asked, surprised by the silent kirin's resolve. "I don't mind going," she lied.
Solstice just shook her head, she made a gesture to Autumn, then mimed singing and then dragged a hoof across her lips, sealing them.
Autumn had to agree with the older kirin, even if it stung a bit. If there really was something dangerous around, then her inability to shut up could be a real liability.
"Fine," she admitted. "Just, be careful, okay."
Solstice nodded, gave another reassuring pat on Autumns back and trotted off in the direction Ember had disappeared to.
Autumn and Winter settled down for a long wait. With nothing else to do they polished off the bottle of tea and the biscuits. There wasn't much they could do for the house without materials but they set about carving and decorating the planks already in place, mostly for something to do while they waited.
It wasn't until the sun was setting that Solstice returned.
"Finally!" Autumn exclaimed, and rushed over to hug her fellow kirin.
Solstice endured the treatment with a passive expression.
"But where's Ember?" Autumn eventually had to ask. While it was a relief to see Solstice back safe and sound she couldn't help but notice that the kirin was alone. Winter too stepped up with a curious expression on her face.
Solstice pointed back the way she had come from.
"She's over there?" Autumn asked, strange, if Solstice had found her, why hadn't she brought the other kirin back with her?
She asked as much, but Solstice just shrugged and pointed to the forest again.
Autumn wasn't sure how to feel about this, it definitely felt off. She studied the impassive kirin, and the sense of wrongness only increased.
The staring went on for a while until Autumn gave in and looked away from Solstice's green eyes.
Green? Her eyes were yellow, weren't they?
Autumn looked at her old friend again and sure enough, her eyes shone with a faint green light, how strange.
Solstice on the other hoof seemed to get impatient. She stomped her hooves and pointed to the forest again.
"You want us to go there?" Autumn asked, a note of suspicion in her voice.
The older kirin nodded, satisfied.
Before Autumn could act on her gut feeling to reject the suggestion, Winter stepped up and nodded.
Solstice gave a satisfied grin and turned to walk off in the direction where Ember supposedly was. Winter followed.
Still feeling the sense of wrongness, especially after that grin on her friend's notoriously impassive face Autumn decided to follow as well. She just couldn't abandon Winter and Ember to their fate.
She couldn't abandon Solstice either, even if the older kirin was acting very odd. She had to get to the bottom of this, and the urge to protect Winter was strong. Kirins always looked after the younger members of the herd, even oddballs like Autumn, this was instinct.
She steeled herself as she followed the duo, for what exactly she wasn't sure, but she stayed on her guard.
Turns out it wasn't that easy to stay on guard for long. The trip just felt so normal after a while. Solstice trotted silently ahead of them, leading the pair deeper into the forest, but a kirin being silent was nothing strange, and it was the same forest they were used to. As tensions began to ease Autumn found herself chatting away with Winter. Of course the younger kirin never responded with more than the occasional head movement, but it felt good regardless.
Just as Autumn was starting to feel like everything was fine after all, that she had imagined all the wrongness, Solstice stopped in front of a cave.
The elder kirin turned around, still wearing that hungry looking grin from earlier and pointed at the cave. Autumn immediately felt the anxiety rush back, this wasn't right at all! Solstice's eyes were glowing bright green and that strange grin was deeply unsettling. Not to mention the cave gave her the creeps.
Winter however seemed not to have noticed. She looked between Solstice and the cave opening, a queryous look on her face.
"Is Ember in there?" Autumn asked for her silent friend.
Solstice nodded, her grin widening. Autumn felt her suspicion grow, she was starting to suspect the kirin in front of her wasn't Solstice after all, this was just too many odd things at once.
"Really?" she asked, stepping toward the older kirin, looking her deep into those unsettlingly green eyes.
Solstice just nodded, and repeated the gesture toward the cave. The message was clear, she wanted Autumn to go inside.
Like heck I will, Autumn thought to herself. There's something very strange going on here.
"Why would Ember be in a cave?" she asked, taking another few steps forward and glaring.
The older kirin clearly wasn't intimidated, her grin just grew.
Before Autumn could confront the grinning kirin further, 'Solstice' pointed behind her.
Autumn spun around, expecting some kind of ambush but saw nothing. Before she could breathe out she realized this wasn't good at all. Where was Winter?
She looked around and just caught the swish of Winter's tail as the younger kirin disappeared into the mouth of the cave.
"Winter!" she called out to no avail, the younger kirin had already been swallowed up by the darkness.
A cackling laughter made Autumn spin around again.
Solstice, or whatever it was that had her shape was laughing, her eyes glowing a deep green.
Autumn narrowed her own eyes, now she was certain something was very wrong. Kirins didn't laugh, well she did but she was the exception to that rule, and they especially didn't laugh at a young herd member wandering into an unknown cave.
Feeling the urge to blast this imposter, Autumn still had her priorities in order. She spun around a third time and rushed after Winter.
Knowing the cave was probably some kind of trap didn't change Autumn's decision, in fact it only made her need to protect Winter even more urgent. She stormed into the darkness, ready to let the fire inside her out if anything threatened her younger herd member.
"Winter!" she called out again. No response.
She rushed down dark corridors, somehow knowing that she'd find Winter, Ember and probably Solstice too at the end.
She turned out to be right. The tunnel ended in a brightly lit chamber, well brightly lit compared to the darkness of the tunnel. The light was disturbingly familiar though. It wasn't the warm white of sunlight, nor the flickering orange of torches. The light that met Autumn was the same green she had seen emanating from Solstice's eyes earlier.
What scared her far more than the light itself was the source of it.
She had found Winter, the young kirin was standing in the middle of the room, even more still than usual as the light from the horn of another creature shone over her.
The new creature was one of nightmares. Black insect-like armour covered the beast from its perforated hooves to the tip of her gnarled horn. Mossy green hair hung across her lean but unnaturally tall frame and insectile wings glistened on her back.
The beast was doing… something to Winter. The kirin was just standing there as the monster seemed to drain her of energy. The soft blue of Winter's magic flowed from the kirin, sucked in by the horn of her assailant.
Winter was groaning as the essence of magic left her body, leaving her weak and frail. Autumn feared that if she didn’t interfere, the young kirin would be drained dry.
Several more monsters skittered in her way as she moved to stop the horrific scene. These ones were smaller, but equally grotesque. They sneered at her as they barred her way, fangs glistening in the sickening green light.
“Ah, I see you managed to bring another one,” the biggest of the monsters spoke. Her voice was high and imperious as her slitted eyes focused on Autumn. “Very well done, Chitin.”
“Thank you, my queen,” an unnervingly familiar voice replied from behind Autumn.
Knowing what a terrible idea it was to turn her back to this monster and her army, Autumn nevertheless did just so. What she saw was Solstice stepping into the chamber.
The kirin was still sporting that unnatural grin, but as Autumn watched the apparition changed. Green flames licked Solstice’s body, burning away the floofy mane, the soft coat and the colourful scales of the old kirin, leaving only a black armoured husk behind. Solstice, it seemed, was one of the creatures who had captured Winter. Captured her by playing on her trust for the older kirin.
Autumn felt the fire inside her flare up, begging to be released. Winter had trusted them. She had trusted them, and somewhere in the back of her mind she feared that the real Solstice had trusted them. They had all been played, and most likely Ember and Solstice had paid the ultimate price. Autumn could feel herself getting hotter as the fury of the Nirek grew inside her.
She turned back to the largest of the monsters, the one called queen, and growled.
The queen of the monsters replied with a mocking laughter.
“Oh little kirin, what are you going to do? I have already captured your friends here, and you will be next.”
As the creature turned away from Winter to face Autumn, the young kirin collapsed and lay motionless. Autumn barely managed to hold the fire inside herself as she saw red.
“What have you done to them!?” She barked.
Her words had a much more profound effect on the monster queen than her growl had had. The beast took a step back in surprise.
“This one can speak?”
“I can.” Autumn replied, taking a step forward only to be swarmed by the smaller monsters. They surrounded her on all sides, closing in.
“No matter, you will feed my children just like the rest of your kind.”
The sneer had already returned to the monster queen’s excuse for a muzzle.
And why shouldn’t she feel victorious? After all she and her soldiers had probably subdued several kirins in Autumn’s position.
But Autumn was not like other kirins, and the monster queen was about to find out.
With a primal roar Autumn gave in to the fire inside her, unleashing the wrath of the nirik!
Unlike the fake Solstice’s transformation, the flames of Autumn burned much brighter, and stayed lit, bathing the room in shades of red and blue. They lasted too, leaving her blackened body wreathed in a fire that wouldn’t go out. These monsters had nothing on a true nirik!
Now it was Autumn Blaze’s turn to laugh, as her flames spread, reaching out towards the panicking monsters, herding them aside with a wall of fire. One touch of her searing hot anger was enough to send the smaller monsters fleeing, screaming in pain and terror as the fire chased them away.
Now it was only Blaze and the monster the queen left, the latter having lost her imperiousness to fear.
“What?” the monster called out, backing away the heat emanating from Blaze. The fires of a nirek’s fury easily outglowing the faint green of the cave and the monster queen’s horn. “How can this be? Your kind was supposed to be easy to infiltrate. You don’t even communicate!”
Blaze let out another laugh, and a gout of flame that seared the ground around the so-called queen.
“Well,” she sneered as the flames inched closer, surrounding the monster on all sides. “maybe we should!”
With a flash of fury she closed the ring of fire around the beast.
The queen let out a pitiful howl and fled, trailing smoke as she hurried to catch up to her underlings.
Blaze smirked, her fire bathing the rest of the cave as she looked around for anything else to set on fire, only to stop as her eyes fell on something that startled her enough for the flames to go out.
“Winter!” Autumn called out as she rushed towards the prone body of her friend.
To her utter relief the young kirin was still breathing. She held Winter tight until she opened her eyes.
“It’s over,” she promised the kirin clutched in her embrace. “I saw the monsters off.”
Winter gave her savior a weak but genuine smile. Thank you.
For a minute they just hugged each other, until another thought managed to press its way to Autumn’s mind. What about the others?
With Winter now secured, Autumn let up on the hug to look around for the rest of her friends. Maybe it wasn’t too late for Solstice, maybe the monsters hadn’t drained her any more than they had Winter. The older kirin could still be alive!
She lit her fire once more, this time remaining in control. She wasn’t letting them out in anger, she just needed the light to search for her friends.
What she found was cocoons, half a dozen of them. Transparent things filled with green ooze, and much more importantly the bodies of several kirins!
“Ember!” Autumn called out, her flaming hoof touching the closest cocoon long enough to burn a hole. The goo spilled out across the floor, taking the body with it.
It took another few heartstopping moments to confirm that Ember Spring was also still breathing. Autumn let out a shout of relief. This meant that they could all be within saving. Hastily she channeled her flames to cut open all the cocoons, spilling out kirin after kirin onto the now sticky cave floor. Winter hurried to assist, nuzzling her friends back to consciousness.
The last of the cocoons turned out to hold the real Solstice Glare, and Autumn was soon surrounded by a wall of hugs.
None of them would let their disapproval for her lifestyle get in the way of the gratitude they felt for the one kirin who had refused to take her anger away, saving it for days like these, when there really was something worth burning.
Autumn was in the best of moods as they all made it silently back to the village. She didn’t even feel the need to sing, it just felt so good to be appreciated for who she was, and to be one of the herd again.
