Chapter Five Kion #2
Stymphs, on the other hand, can’t just bloody take off like wyverns, requiring patience from the rider as the beast garners momentum and altitude by approximately fifteen seconds of hard flapping.
Once risen, the stymphs’ ability to glide is really what had once pushed Kion’s team to the Top Three of the NCL Major League.
The rider needs to be strong, well equipped to maneuver those soars and also deal, competently, with their drag.
Drag. Wyverns, he knows, have less of it: something to do with their wings, the smoothness of them.
And although stymphs’ wings act as an airfoil and somewhat reduce the turbulence, the friction, that comes with flying, they’re still heavy and uneven with layers of feathers in comparison to the wyverns’.
Although this is fine for the stymph if it was flying alone, for a rider on its back, the beast’s wing slots—meant to smooth over airflow—can only do so much.
Level One Balance and Agility glyphs inked on the rider can help mitigate the effects of drag, but Taissa’s been spoiled by riding beasts who cut through the air like a hot knife through butter.
Stymphs ride air currents like boats bumping around on a choppy ocean.
And he remembers Taissa’s old uniform. Standard fare, really.
It was the color of her team, black and red, with the usual breastplate, kneepads, ribbed gloves, qyl thigh holster, and heavy boots all players wear.
Her former playing number, 18, was painted on the back of it in white.
But compared to the gear of the Stymphs, all that leather is as light as a snowflake.
To protect riders against the sharp undersides of their steed’s feathers, every NCL Stymph uniform is reinforced with arachnis silk, imported from Greece’s Hidden Cities, where humanoid spiders make a profit off their near-indestructible silk.
But unlike other forms of silk, arachnis weighs a fuck-ton.
And then there’s the temperament.
Stymphs are…well, he’ll put it this way, using yet another understatement. Stymphs are different than wyverns. But at least they’re not as distractible; Kion remembers Taissa’s Winged once leaving mid-game to chase a butterfly. Regardless, Taissa is going to have one hell of a learning curve.
He’s almost looking forward to it.
On the pitch, Mahina’s eyes find his. With sharp, darting movements and a concerned frown belying a very worried tone, his teammate signs: “What have you gotten her into?”
Apparently, he’s gotten her into some deep shit.
Literally.
“Cho,” Kion snaps out in warning, just as her foot plunges into a pile of stymph droppings. He closes his eyes, grimacing as Taissa’s enraged curse—some Scottish euphemism he’s never heard before, something involving a numpty and a boggin—echoes inside the Nexitory’s stables.
The stables are a mammoth warehouse of domed rosewood walls and a soft grass ground.
In the center, a towering tree the size of a small skyscraper stretches toward the latticed ceiling, home to the giant stymph nests settled upon its branches.
The handlers bring a variety of materials for the stymphs to build their nests with, everything from heaping piles of sticks to old tires, telephone wires, and magazines.
The amount of times Kion’s glimpsed his own face peeking out of Cato’s monstrosity of a nest is ridiculous. He swears Cato rips out Kion’s photographs as décor just to torment him.
Horrible bird, he thinks fondly.
“Ah,” says Knox, standing beside Kion, pursing his lips and staring at Taissa’s foot, “that is very unfortunate.”
Isla giggles behind her hand. She and Knox were the only ones out of the team who had wanted to tag along after the introductions on the pitch, and Kion isn’t such a fool as to not see the remnants of hopeful, starry-eyed admiration for Taissa on Isla’s heart-shaped face.
He knows that Isla joined the NCL because of Cho—because she was following in the path of her idol, her—as Isla once put it—“first girl-crush.” If Taissa lets his youngest player down again, Kion doesn’t know if she’ll be able to take it. He clenches his jaw.
“Unfortunately,” Knox continues pleasantly, “our stymphs have a fiber-heavy diet.”
Kion narrows his eyes as Taissa slowly, deliberately, removes her ruined trainer from the pile of white poo and turns to look at him, like it’s all somehow his sodding fault. For Merlin’s sake, he’d tried to warn her.
But that’s how it goes with Taissa, isn’t it? Everything, even things done of her own bloody volition, are somehow his fault.
“Leave off,” he grumbles, exasperated. They aren’t here to argue. That will most certainly come later. But right now, they’re here so that Taissa can find a stymph, but with the way she’s cursing the pile of droppings, her bonding with one of the birds is seeming less and less likely by the second.
Up above, in the tree—nicknamed Yggdrasil by the team for decades, ages before Kion joined—a stymph peeks out of its nest at the very top, red eyes glittering, and clicks out a dark laugh.
When Taissa’s glower finally moves away from Kion, pinning instead on the stymph, the bird rises from its nest and shakes out its sparse feathers that are gray with age.
The feathers’ undersides gleam sharp silver beneath the cool light of the stable as the stymph launches itself into the air, swooping downward past the other nests, past the branches of Yggdrasil, and straight toward Taissa.
Bloody hells.
Kion knows this stymph. The pale white scar on its giant bronze beak and that hint of pink, bumpy skin underneath those sparse feathers tell him all he needs to know.
That thing’s been dubbed Cronus by the handlers.
They insist that he tried to eat his own children as they hatched—and nearly all the stymphs in the stables are his, including Kion’s own Winged, Cato.
Cronus is a giant, cantankerous, murderous old man in bird form, and he’s headed straight for Taissa like he wants to kill her.
Wind stirs Kion’s hair from the approaching bird’s attack.
Ah, fuck.
“Get down!” bellows a handler in his mid-fifties who has been lingering behind them, undoubtedly eavesdropping on their conversation.
Cronus cackles as Isla flings herself to the ground, her stymph—Jemmy, a small albino—shrieking in alarm from the tree as her father shoots toward Taissa with his talons outstretched…
And is promptly shocked by a flash of white.
The gray-haired handler—Markus—has his qyl out, a jagged Level Two Voltaic glyph darkening on the palm of his other hand, which is pointed toward Cronus. The stymph veers away, cawing in hoarse pain and rage. Kion’s jaw tightens as Isla climbs back onto her feet, joined by a winded-looking Knox.
“Markus,” he snaps, “was that completely necessary?”
“I used to ride that bastard in reserve,” grouses the older man, shaking out his hand. “Trust me, it fucking was.”
“I’m not too convinced,” he warns. Cronus is violent, yeah, but the Voltaic glyph?
It’s not dark magic, but it well verges on it, and seeing it wielded against one of the club’s stymphs doesn’t sit right in Kion’s stomach.
And there’s that scar on the old bird’s beak, a scar that shouldn’t be on a Nexitory stymph who only made it as far as practicing on the reserve team some two decades ago.
For as long as Kion’s been with the NCL Stymphs, about twelve years now, the players and handlers have spoken of Cronus with both revulsion and fear.
This, though, is the first time that Kion’s seen—with his own two eyes—something like this happen. Usually, Cronus is content to sit high above the other stymphs, in his humongous nest, casting an evil eye over the carriwitchet players and occasionally trying to shit on their heads from afar.
Something about Taissa incensed him.
Kion supposes he can relate.
“He was headed straight for her,” Markus protests, scowling furiously. “I know that beast. He would have—OI! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
Alarmed, Kion’s head whips back toward Taissa to see her slowly approaching Cronus, who’s landed some meters away, blinking dazedly, momentarily grounded.
“Well,” Knox says as Isla gasps, “that’s an interesting turn of events.”
“Cho,” Kion grits out, convinced he’s about to see his newest recruit shish kebabbed, “get back here. That bird isn’t right in the head. There’s a reason he was retired from reserve playing.”
And that reason is his homicidal tendencies.
Damn it, she doesn’t even look at him.
“Cho,” he repeats, starting forward, only to be gently tugged back by Isla, who’s watching Taissa and Cronus with a thoughtful expression.
“Wait,” she whispers. “Watch, Kion.”
What’s she thinking? He can already see the headlines. Taissa Cho Eaten by Giant Stymph. Grieving “Boyfriend” Kion Locke to Read Eulogy.
Fuck. Making a speech is the last thing Kion wants to do.
Taissa’s directly in front of Cronus by now, slowly raising a hand toward his beak. His beak.
Cho, you moron.
His shoulders are so tense that they ache, and every single muscle in his body wants to lurch into action, wants to haul Taissa back toward safety.
Damn it, this is worse than when she fell from her wyvern.
In Yggdrasil, the other stymphs are chittering amongst themselves.
Hidden somewhere in the monstrous branches, Cato’s voice nudges into his mind, sounding amused.
“I hope you know that my father is going to tear this girl limb from limb.”