The Petal Kingdom was always a tenuous sanctuary in an ancient world that lay beyond any virtue. Floating on silver streams and hills of green, it held but five thousand souls—a tiny footnote to the sweeping empires of Fire and Desire. The magical defenses of the kingdom were relaxed but unshiftable, and the gates dividing it from the rest of the world shut out invasions and creatures. There had been life there lived at its own languorous rhythm, still and quiet, as if the inhabitants of the place themselves were conditioning their lungs against the storm that was going on outside.
It was all different on the day Ryuken was born.
It was the initial wail of the infant that had shattered the silence of the palace corridors, echoing off walls on which warding runes had been scratched through centuries. That is when the sky was torn asunder. Clouds convulsed and battled each other like something torn apart by a titanic, unseen hand. Lightning tore the sky apart, illuminating the Petal World in stark, unmitigated bursts of light. And then the thunder, low and raspily, its vibration shuddering in the mountains, its windows trembling in the palace.
In the birth room, the king and queen of the tiny kingdom gazed in terror at the baby. Their Petal Eyes, a defensive mutation that healed wounds as easily as inflicting harm, could not fight the horrors that now permeated the air. The air that enclosed theirs was charged as it twisted towards the baby child and bristled their hairs.
This. this child. his mother shuddered with fear. "He bears. bad fortune."
His father's face was sliced in a bitter line. Rage and terror fought on his face. "The storm, the lightning. the omens. He's blessed. He's not ours."
The midwives glanced at one another nervously, nervously mumbling back and forth in the room. The child was one they had never in their lives ever had the luxury of keeping with them before. The candle capered wildly to and fro, shadows twisting evil shapes on the walls as they snuck beneath the radiance of the tempest outside the windows. Even the wards that protected the palace from the enchantment of the Petal Eye quivered beneath the attack.
Out in the village beyond, the villagers were beginning to stir. Three at doors and windows, pale with wonder and terror, stood in threes. Mothers clasped them to their breasts their children, whispering softly to forgotten gods yet still ruling. Fathers grasped grasped farm implements useless against the strange procession in the air. Elders stood, staves ready with runes of ancient wisdom, nodded and snarled in tongues of ill fortune and long-cursed.
The clouds of the kingdom churned with mounting desperation, a black caldron of water. Lightning ripped through the heavens with fiery vengeance, reducing leaves from faraway trees to ash and starting small fires on the slopes of hillsides. Thunder boomed and boomed, resonating against the mountains, and the wind ripped through the Petal Kingdom like a blade of living steel. Even the villagers who were raised in their whole lives to storms of the usual kind stood tense with terror; this was not normal weather. Something—someone—had awakened the heavens themselves.
The elders, rather than rushing for their Petal Eyes to shield their little baby child, had acted in fear. Fear and superstition had taken precedence over duty.
"He will bring disaster," snarled the father. "We cannot let it happen this kingdom by any means."
The aliens had hurled the portal wide onto edge of palace grounds with calculating callousness, an unearthly portal for directed traveling or conversing with other worlds. And with compassion-free absence of feeling, they thrust the young Ryuken into it, to whatever perils beyond protective fences.
The villagers' eyes opened in terror. Mothers screamed, clutching their children. Fathers roared futilely, slamming their doors shut or roaring upwards towards the heavens. Others ran for the palace gate but doorways were closed to visitors; the child was borne away before anyone could move. Screams ripped the small village on the wind as it was compounded with the thunder that rolled above.
The storm itself seemed privy to the abandonment of the child, raging forth with a greater ferocity. Rain pounded against the roofs, water burst over through the streets, and the winds cut through the trees, curling and splitting their trunks. Lightning tore through the air, blinding the world in a mad whirling of light and dark. The villagers winced with every flash, every crack, as if the storm itself were sentient and had a personal grudge against them for the savagery of the overlords.
The threats in the world beyond lay naked to the eye from afar. The beasts roamed the fringes of the lands, giant figures of power who could destroy a village at leisure without breaking a sweat. Portals had held these in reserve up to now, but with Ryuken plummeting down, he was open to whatever the small kingdom had been holding in reserve. The villagers could only speculate what he was holding for him: forests full of giant snakes, rivers home to animals whose teeth shone like blades, mountains where items larger than any palace roamed about at their own will.
They were frightened. "He. he'll die!" a woman cried, clinging to her son's hand. "Sent out into the storm, alone!"
An old woman mutterd shakily, "This child. he's lost. No shield, no spells, no mercy can save him now." Others had expected apology or action from the monarchs, but the parents remained still, terror and hatred which could not be hidden on their faces. Their hearts were hardened by curses and bad luck whispers. "He was a mistake," they sneered with contempt. "No more than a sign of death." The villagers dreaded the worst as the baby fell down through the gateway out of view. Some fell to the ground crying, others cried to heaven for pity as they grieved. Even the boldest of them—a group of warriors used to keeping off ruthless killers—could merely stand immobilized before the might of what had transpired. The gateway pulsed and glowed with a malignant light, the storm quivering in sympathetic oscillation as if it held the child in a realm of concealed dangers. And out he went: Ryuken, newborn, helpless, naked, into the storm outside the Petal Realm. The villagers stirred to behold, hearts racing, faces white, their cries drowned in the fury of the storm. Each flash of lightning showed the small shape, small and helpless, against the vast indifferent world outside. Each bang of thunder threatened the terrors that lay in wait for him. With each gust of wind, it growled at their hearts, a living entity embodying their paralyzing fear. The boy alone, a creation of fear, hatred, and superstition. And the villagers knew, calmly, that the world outside the Petal Realm would never forgive him.