The World Walkers: Athare/Quiar: Kaito: Running

[k_a_webb]

In the Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments we met Kaito, a Walker living on Quiar in the form of a fox. This story is about how he got there. Posting will be dependent on donations, £1.50 for 1000 more words, and this seems a good time for a reminder of the Sponsor A Collection page. Use the drop down menu to tell me the word count, tell me the collection you want to sponsor, and if you have a specific storyline you’d like to see more of then let me know. Remember that for every £5 in donations towards this storyline or the Case of the Counterfeit Enchantmens I’ll also post a bonus story.

It was amazing how quickly things could change. One minute Kaito had been a normal Walker, going about his every day life, and the next he was a fugitive, wanted by the Council for questioning. Running had been his only option, because he knew what would happen. Like all the other Walkers he’d seen someone questioned, as a part of his training once he finished his studies, so the thought of taking the potion that meant he’d have no option but to answer all their questions… he shuddered even thinking about it. Breathing deeply he did his best to push everything he was thinking out of his mind. He needed to focus on where he was going.

Like all of the other Walkers Kaito had done his best to follow the rules, but the rules had been created by the fae when the Council was first created. They had no idea what it was like to be a Walker. If they had known they would never have thought they could destroy the natural Walkers in order to replace them with something easier to control. He didn’t know how they could be so blinkered. Magic evolved. The worlds they’d created had changed, the races they’d created had changed, and it seemed as though the magic they’d used was something they’d never been able to understand.

The day Kaito passed his final exam, with a much better mark than he was expecting, he hadn’t known what was coming. None of the training they did gave them any understanding what it was really like to be a Walker. Each exam was about knowledge, about what the fae thought was needed, because they could never know what it was like to step onto another world and feel a connection to it. He wasn’t sure many of the fae had even tried travelling from one world to another, instead doing their best to ignore what it was they’d created in order to use the magic they seemed addicted to. It wasn’t until he stepped onto Quiar that he finally understood.

Quiar wasn’t one of the worlds Kaito had studied. He’d never planned on travelling there. It was disconnected from the rest of the web because of the races that lived there. Some Walkers called them the creature races, mocking them as they were seen as lesser races, Quiar as a lesser world due to who lived there. There was some surprise that Quiar hadn’t been taken over and repopulated by other, better, races, and it wasn’t until he met Carver that he heard a different point of view. Carver’s origins, his reasons for viewing Quiar differently, was one of the secrets Kaito kept.

Almost all the Walkers Kaito had met were born and raised on Athare. Athare was the home of the Council so it was understandable. Carver had been born on Quiar. It was his stories about Quiar that convinced Kaito he wanted to visit once and see the beautiful world his friend was talking about. Of course he hadn’t been expecting to connect with the world, especially as he hadn’t connected with any of his chosen worlds, but that was exactly what he did. The feeling was one he couldn’t describe to anyone, so he was thankful that Carver already understood. Like Carver Kaito was something different to the Walker that the fae wanted him to be, which was probably why there was a warrant out for his arrest, and he if he wanted to keep his ability to travel the worlds he needed to get away.

Fortunately Kaito had experimented with what his tattoos would allow him to do. The belief was that the tattoos would only let someone walk through fae created doors, which would have made things difficult. When the fae had created the worlds they’d never planned for the Walkers and the doors had been created to allow the fae to travel to the new worlds in order to make sure things were working correctly. It meant that there were routes a Walker had to take through the web in order to reach the world they wanted to be on. Using one of the natural doors would take him straight to Larnach, the opposite side to where he had originally visited, whenever he wanted to be there.

Kaito just needed to get safely to the door, which was on the other side of the main continent. If it hadn’t been for Azure, one of the natural Walkers who had chosen to become a Council Walker, he wouldn’t even have known it was there, but as things changed, as more Council Walkers connected to the worlds of the web in the same way the natural ones did, they were beginning to share the knowledge they had. Maybe things had always been like that. There was no way to know, because no one talked about anything that was against the rules unless they knew they were somewhere they wouldn’t be overheard.

Their caution, which had become more paranoia as Azure was a natural, made Kaito wonder why there was a warrant out for his arrest. He’d never done anything suspicious as far as he could remember. Were the Council just guessing? Pick someone up, question them under potion, and see what they have to say. He didn’t want to believe they’d do something like that, but it did seem a viable possibility. For years there had been rumours that there was another Council, which was in control of everything; stories about the leader of the Council always being one of the descendants of Riordan, the fae who had found the first walker and become the first leader of the Council; and no one knew what was true. A lot of the time it seemed like most Walkers ignored everything apart from the job they’d been trained to do.

Paranoia did help occasionally. After a long conversation about the worst that might happen to them, they’d planned for possible arrest warrants. Kaito had left everything behind, because going home would have been the stupidest thing he could have done, but at least he had some clean clothes and food to take with him on the journey. He wished he could have had a chance to talk to Azure and Carver, possibly Lucille as well, before he had to leave. There was every chance he’d never see any of them again.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

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It's interesting to see the background behind this character!