Keymaster's Gate

“Kira, go for it!”

Acknowledging the signal, Kira reached for the item dangling from a chain around her neck. With no time to consider pulling it over her head, she yanked, the silver chain snapping as she pulled the relic free, ignoring the slight pain that the ripping of the chain left on the back of her neck.

Even as she did so, her left hand raised, her index finger crackling with white light. With a motion honed with years of practice, she etched a symbol in the air, the cracking light leaving a line suspended in the air.

Left hand barely done with its task, she shoved her right hand forward, fingertips firmly grasping a silver key inlaid with moonstones. As she pushed the key into the shape stuck firm in the air, she honed her concentration to a point. With all the proper preparations, she turned the key.

With a click that vibrated through her very soul, an opening the the fabric of reality bloomed before her, widening to the size of a window before she stopped it with a mental flick. And, as if she had truly opened a window, a scene unfamiliar to her surroundings appeared in the square of space.

It looking like a packed closet full of varying items of any and every description. She needed a treasure, one with enough power for the situation.

With that thought, her hand shot out, seizing a silver ring from a stand decorated with a dozen others, this stand resting on a stack of boxes and other relatively square items, all precariously balanced.

Kira slipped the ring on, feeling it bolster her power like a shot of pure adrenaline. Her key, long since falling to her side, slipped into her pocket as she rummaged for an item of power. She waved a hand over the entrance in space to close it, her doorway to another pocket world entirely.

Her gate.

She quickly shut it, so her treasures didn’t lose any significant power, like the ring she now wore was doing. While she had invested months of her own personal power into the rings and trinkets inside her gate, any time they spent outside of it or while it’s open would drain them, their energy leaking back into the normal flow of the world. It was quite convenient, then, that when her gate closed, time within fell to a dead halt until she summoned it again.

As it blinked shut, she scanned her surroundings for what her ally had been warning her about. The process of opening her gate and retrieving the treasure took only a handful of seconds, the opening and closing of the rift burned into her memory after thousands of times activating it.

Kira’s eyes locked on a group of lightly armored enemies, about a dozen total, and she sensed no significant power from them. Just soldiers, or possibly very well-organized gang members. Either way, she had to clear the way.

The silver ring on her right hand glinted and burst into an explosion of lightning, surging up, around and through her, merging with her own inherent powers over lightning and electricity. In a blink, Kira was covered in white lightning, head to toe.

Her opponents were a hundred feet away at the very least, but she covered that in three steps flat.

Almost instantly appearing in front of the first man, she saw him stumble back, eyes widening in horror, and likely regret at choosing a keymaster for an opponent.

Well, maybe not chose… Maybe commanded. She reasoned with herself, but that thought didn’t slow her. In a literal blink, her fist connected with the un-armored face of the man, and he was sent flying backwards, bowling over two other soldiers.

Her attack barely over, she turned, leaping at another man. He already had his shield raised, a good idea for him. Unfortunately, it was banded in steel.

She slapped her palm on the shield, releasing a portion of her lightning into it. The man flew backwards, his shield splintering into chunks as his body still crackled with electricity. He might have lived, or might not have. Kira didn’t have time to consider that.

Five down, eight more.

With that, Kira leapt at a pair of men, one hiding behind a tower shield, the other raising a spear over his companions’ shoulder and shield. Twisting in mid-air with a careful manipulation of her power, she adjusted her trajectory, falling slightly behind the men in a crouch. She had barely landed before she punched forward with both hands, each connecting with a separate man’s leg.

They collapsed in cries of agony, a bone in either leg broken. Shattered, more like, but that was beside the point. They were out of the fight. Kira turned her head to find a bolt from a crossbow soaring directly for her face.

With pure instinct her hand shot up, catching the bolt in a gloved hand. Barely considering what she had just done, she whipped the bolt back to its owner, striking him in the throat.

Okay, he’s dead. At least I tried… Kira thought, counting down in her head. Five left.

Three of them were bunched together, two more men with tower shields and an archer in-between them. The one with a crossbow had been behind another shield wielder, but once he fell, his protector quickly fell in to bolster the last long-range soldier.

An arrow whizzed at her, slower than the crossbow, but with a much deadlier tip, the shaft also larger and heavier. Not risking a flashy catch again, she ducked, the arrow flying far overhead. She decided to retaliate in a similar manner.

Pointing at the trio with a thumb up, as if picking them out in a crowd, she gathered lightning to her hand. Dropping her thumb, she released the pent-up energy, a white bolt of electricity screaming towards the men.

With just enough time to widen eyes in surprise, the bolt struck, and the three simply collapsed to the ground, twitching.

Two left.

As the thought crossed Kira’s mind, she turned one last time to see a man running away to her left, and another man with a sword charging her to her right. She chose a priority, and leapt to her right.

The man she jumped towards screamed, falling to the ground and curling up into a ball. Kira stumbled as she hit the ground before him, and she felt truly sorry for the man. He didn’t look older than twenty-five, and she guessed he was around her age. With a sigh, she whipped around to the sword wielder, ignoring the man crying at her feet.

“Face me, witch!” he shouted, which she thought was hardly fair. Keymasters weren’t that uncommon, and she looked like any normal person, waves of black hair falling past her shoulders in straight lines, a single lock of silver hair falling over her right eye.

Feeling offended, Kira decided to not spare the man. She didn’t even move, letting him come to her.

And he did, swinging his weapon at her as soon as he was in reach, fury blazing in his eyes. Kira, in turn, smacked the flat of the sword downward with her left hand, her right flashing out to break his wrist.

Dropping the blade with a cry, the man stumbled, and Kira took her opportunity.

She kicked her right leg out, hooking the man’s ankle with her foot. In an instant he was perfectly horizontal with the ground, several feet from it. He hung there, seemingly suspended to Kira’s sped up vision, before she brought her fist down like the judgment of the heavens.

Her strike streamed with white lightning as it came down, striking his chest with a crack like thunder. Kira felt his ribs break, her entire body following the punching motion, following his body into the ground.

He died on impact.

His chest looked like it had deflated when she pulled her gloved hand away, and her last strike finally drained her last dredge of energy. She didn’t usually go down the brutality path, but he had insulted her, not to mention trying to kill her.

As she straightened, she studied the silver ring on her right hand, watching it crack in half, falling to the corpse at her feet.

“Lasted longer than I thought…” she mumbled, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“That was… brutal,” came a familiar voice to her left.

“’In the face of overwhelming opposition, one must be prepared to do whatever it takes.’” Kira said with the air of someone quoting. “I think you said that one, didn’t you?”

“Hardly overwhelming opposition, Kira…” Fin said, arms crossed over his brown jacket covered in patches of burnt material like medals of honor, his dirty blond hair rippling in the slight breeze that wafted over the field they stood in.

“Yea, well, next time we’re fighting somewhere less… flammable, I’ll let you take lead,” Kira responded smoothly, glancing down at the dry wheat that came up past her knees.

“Anyway, what do you reckon they were out here for?” Fin asked, changing topics. “I recognized the uniform, belongs to a gang inside the capitol. Blood Pigs or something weird like that.”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe they were after the bounties on our heads, each vast enough to buy a manor?”

“Fair.”

With that, the pair continued on with their now much more leisure walk, Kira leaving the uninjured man to tend to his comrades, headed for the capitol, pace a few steps quicker than before. After all, they did have a rather important client waiting to speak with them

They probably shouldn’t keep the king waiting.