The sea is like ink, rippling in the light of the crescent moon overhead. A figure emerges from the depths, slowly walking onto the shore, its gaze locked onto the forest ahead. Oil-black scales cover its warped humanoid body like a wetsuit. Five floating islands rest high over the sea.

As the water falls away, the scales peel from the humanoid's body and collect onto its back, creating something like scaled dragonfly wings. They drape against its backside, the clothing made of hide fraying into beaded strings at the hem. The figure's tan skin is swollen and purple, its limbs and features bulbous and horrifying. How could she, an ugly one, ever venture out into a world tailored for those who are beautiful?

There's an airy snicker from the trees, spindly teeth coming forth as a creature removes itself from the shadows. Its back is hunched over like a wilting flower, spinal cord nearly ripping through its paper-thin skin. Its long, sharp nails nearly drag the ground and its beady eyes are black with dilation. Ragged beaded cloths hang loosely around the figure--a male, by the style of them. "Have you come to... join us?"

As it snickers again, scales that had been wrapped around the bottoms of his feet peel away and slide up to his hands, covering his fingers and the naturally-grown claws for extra support. These shifting scales are called arn, something crafted long ago. They are implanted into children at age five, the injection site called a "reserve". From then on, they are trained how to use arn for self-defense as armor—never as weapons. However, being ugly from birth, the Night Guardian had been shunned from lessons, her face making even the strongest stomachs turn. She had to watch from a distance.

"Joining forces those who are righteous for selfish reasons is never the answer," the Night Guardian responds, her voice strong and raspy. Her winged arn raise and sharpen, lengthen. Over the years, she noticed that her arn was different than others. Hers was more malleable, more flexible. When she was bullied, her arn wouldn't just protect her, but was also able to slice into other arn. No one had arn that could cut through other arn.

Until she found the Night Guardians.

At age thirteen, she slipped from the edge of her floating island above, two girls pushing her around and not realizing how close to the edge they were. She landed with a smack in the moonlight, water crashing around her and taking her breath. Motes danced around her vision as she moved her limbs, strength slowly disappearing as she sunk deeper. Warmth circled her wrist; someone was saving her. Opening her eyes, she saw a glimpse of someone covered in arn.

She broke the surface, gasping and choking.

The woman brought her to shore, the full-body arn peeling from her skin and gathering on her back like a cape, moving with life. Her face was ugly, yes, but she looked prettier than any other ugly our protagonist had seen.

"My name is Misha," she said, helping her stand. "What is yours, kid?"

"I was never deserving of one."

Misha frowned in sadness. The woman's thin white hair was speckled with spots of gray, burn scars all up the left side of her body. Was the ugliness purposefully inflicted upon her?

"I'm sorry to hear that," Misha whispered as the trees hummed with life. "I'll try and think of one for you. I saved someone from a fire and was burned, and that's why I'm ugly. If you want, there is a secret workplace for ugly ones. Your arn looks strong and flexible. We could use someone like you."

The memory of Misha sends a pang through the Night Guardian's heart. The two extra limbs her arn had created just below the main two sink low, plunging out beside her hips like tusks.

A scream pierces the air.

Human.

The creature grimaces and darts into the trees, and she follows close behind it.

"How does that feel, pretty one?" she hears, the cooing of several creatures taking over the airways as she stops to take in what she sees, her arn lifting her quietly into the trees above. She counts twelve creatures standing in a circle, chanting and cheering quietly. The extra one in the middle stands over a pretty man.

The creature from the beach bursts through the twelve and walks over to the thirteenth.

"The Night Guardian heard the scream."

The middle one scowls and thrusts his claw in deeper, digging another hole into his flesh and making him cry out.

"Guess we'll have to cut this short," Thirteenth says in his gravelly voice. "Or would you like to become ugly slower?"

They're making people ugly? She thinks to herself, unable to bear this any longer. She wasn't sure what they really did once they stole a pretty person—none of the Night Guardians were ever able to return with one alive.

Her arn propel her to the center of the circle, knocking Thirteenth off the man. The man finds the strength to stand.

"By order of the Night Guardians, you are commanded to peacefully retreat from my presence."

One of the creatures attacks with their arn, the appendage cracking onto the ground next to the Night Guardian as she snaps it away with her own.

She glances quickly at the man as she brings her uppermost right arn around, throwing a creature in mid-jump into a tree. She grunts from the strain. "Run toward the beach when you find an opening."

With that, she attacks relentlessly, creating a path for him to retreat. She hears the man cry out just as she dances away from another creature's claws. He leans up against a tree, claw marks covering the length of his chest, blood saturating his clothes.

Arns rapidly thrusting at enemies, the last one finally drops, the Night Guardian's body battered.

The sounds in the trees tell her there are more coming.

"Let's go," she instructs, woozy from blood loss.

"I've never seen arn used like that before," the man grunts as the grass turns to sand.

"I am sure you are aware of this, but you cannot tell anyone of what you saw."

"Yeah, sure. So, what made you look like that?" he asks as they walk into the water, the salt stinging, the Night Guardian's body close to giving out.

She glares at him as her arn sweeps over her like a wetsuit, a clear part to see through forming before her eyes. It's made by stretching out the skin of the arn to an incredibly thin layer. It took her two years to master. "It's a mild variation of my disease, but it is treatable through expensive surgery."

"Why didn't you ever have it done?"

"It seems most pretty ones are ignorant like you," she spits. "This is who we are and money doesn't come easy to us."

A new group of creatures burst out onto the beach. She grimaces and turns around, the scales peeling back and forming two appendages, standing tall over her bloody shoulders.

"Leave me," she demands, a swell toppling her over. The man shakes his head as he wraps his arms around her and hoists her over his shoulder. She fights him weakly, her body exhausted.

The bit of arn he kept in his reserve stretches upward and covers his mouth and hers as he dips below the water and swims downward. Behind a wall of coral is the entrance to the portal, and he pulls the doors open. The different colors for each island appear murkily before him, glowing slightly in the darkness. Taking a breath from what's left of the trapped oxygen, he swims through, green light surrounding him just as the Night Guardian loses consciousness.

~

"You're awake."

The Night Guardian sits up, immediately alerted by the change in her surroundings. The pretty man she'd saved is sitting in a chair beside her, his face gentle. Walls made of earth reach up around her. The man has gauze placed over his larger wounds, most already healed.

"I'm an apprentice to the herbalist on my island. I asked if I could help in healing you. Your disease was easily treatable."

The Night Guardian stares at him, fear swelling inside of her. Her fingers stumble across her face, the bumps that had worsened over the years now absent. Glancing down at herself, she can see the cuts and scrapes from the creatures, but no more deformities. She shoves the covers from her legs and stands. The knots and bulbous areas have been decreased to a size that's almost invisible to the naked eye.

"You had a curable disease that only took you a few days to recover from."

She shakes her head violently and rips away from the man, tears stinging her eyes. "I've always been deformed--it's who I was, and I was okay with that! I became the Night Guardian, because of it--"

She sets her jaw and stands upright, a tear breaking loose.

"It doesn't matter what happened to me because of my looks or my arn; what matters is that everything needs something to protect it from harm. I'm supposed to protect in the shadows. That's why I was born ugly."

"But you deserve to be pretty—"

"I only had a few more years left," she says, a sob following her statement. "The disease would've disposed of me in a few years. Someone as worthless as me doesn't deserve to walk this earth."

The man blinks, surprised at her sudden change in tune.

He leans down and looks into her eyes, a glimmer of sincerity there. "You are greater than you give yourself credit for, Night Guardian. Your heart is the most beautiful thing about you. Your appearance doesn't make you who you are. Some of the most beautiful people are the ugliest inside."

Her lips quiver. Such kind words... she can feel their warmth, but she refuses them.

"I must go," she whispers, taking a step back as he reaches for her. "I will find a way to repay you one day."

With that, she darts out of the room.

~

It's been many moons since she was cured.

The trees are saturated in darkness as the Night Guardian leaps through the branches with her arn to help guide her. She looks behind her, the floating islands barely visible past the trees. Their low-dipping season is upon them, their closeness to the water below making it easy for the creatures to climb up and attack their inhabitants.

Something slams against her. She catches herself on a larger branch toward the base of the tree. Eyes darting through the shaking trees around her, she spots a humanoid figure. It drops to the branch adjacent to her, the clothes on its deathly-thin body giving away its gender. Female.

Her nails are pointed but short, legs long and spindly. Her right arm holds onto the branch above her while her left scratches at a long, deep gash down her bumpy cheek, splitting the corner of her large-lipped mouth open.

"You..." she breathes, her left hand pointing a shaky finger. "You are the one who terrorizes us... Ugly ones..."

There's shifting below, the snapping of sticks.

More creatures have come to play.

"Revenge," one begins to mutter over and over, one of his eyes spilling from his socket.

He continues to ramble on, the Night Guardian's arn standing tall around her in three appendages while she waits for the fourth to regenerate.

"Hey, kid," a voice booms, her voice piercing the Night Guardian's soul.

"So that's what happened to you," the Night Guardian breathes as she turns to look up higher in the branches.

The creature smiles in the contrasting shadows the moonlight creates on her.

"I brought you into the world of the Night Guardian," she says, her voice rough now, "and it's me who will take you out."

~

A scream wakes the island, followed by an abrupt gurgling.

The herbalist's apprentice who had cured the Night Guardian rushes out into the moonlight. Dawn is breaking, the islands low in the sky. Winter is upon them and the islands are dipping lower each day, making creature attacks more probable until spring.

A little boy lies still as a creature rips into his chest, giggling with pleasure. Chaos reigns as more creatures climb up the side of the mountain.

He grits his teeth just as the leading herbalist calls out to him. "Alyn, come inside."

His chest aches as he rushes into the building, locking the doors. He's terrified. Once again, he feels as he did while watching the Night Guardian below, protecting and saving him.

Helpless.

Apprentices are rushing around, trying to save the patients as they move them into a locked shelter beneath the building. He moves quickly as he rushes to where he heard a scream, picking up the sharpest utensil he can find as someone scrambles out. He peers into the room and his stomach drops.

On the floor lies the Night Guardian, her blood pooling around her. Glass shards bite into her back as a creature whose skin is scarred from severe burns stands over her, grinning wide. She had thrown the Night Guardian through the window and followed her in.

"Not so high-and-mighty now, are you, kid?" she asks, kicking her hard. The Night Guardian spits blood as her eyes squint closed from pain.

"You—said—protect—" the Night Guardian chokes out. "Misha—"

The woman's name.

Her head cocks to the side as Alyn catches her eye.

"Are you her knight in shining armor, pretty boy?" Her nose wrinkles as she drops to all fours, her manmade jagged teeth catching his eye. Her nails are short and groomed, and her muscles are well defined. Her arn lifts from behind her, a massive tail-like structure, pointed like a needle.

Misha's quick as she leaps from her spot, pinning Alyn to the floor. She cackles and rears her head back, readying herself to clamp her jaw around his trachea.

She screams.

Blood splatters onto Alyn's face as Misha falls over, gasping for air. Alyn looks over his shoulder to see the Night Guardian holding herself up on one elbow, the uppermost right arn she'd used to impale Misha with slowly lifting into the air. She's able to get a second elbow underneath her as Misha gathers her bearings.

The Night Guardian finds the strength to stand. She blocks Misha's next blow and knocks the woman's arn away. She jabs her left top arn right through Misha's, the woman screaming her arn gives way. At that moment, the Night Guardian lets go of the doorway holding her up and narrows her eyes as she grits her teeth and rears back her uppermost right arn to strike.

"I looked up to you." Her voice wavers as a tear falls from her eye. "I wanted to protect people like you did, and here you are, drowning in your pity."

She thrusts her right arn forward, its tip embedding itself into Misha's gut, the Night Guardian staggering forward with a sob, her knees wobbling. She pulls it out, a bloody smile earned from the woman as a tear falls from her own eye, regret seeping through.

"Your name..." she gasps between dying breaths. "I thought... you'd like... Kaeda... Wanted... the best... for you... You will... never... be accepted..."

Her knees give out just as her arn wraps around her like a cocoon. The only thing holding her up are the Night Guardian's arn. She pulls her appendages from Misha and falls to the ground herself, her body giving out. She smacks Alyn's hand away as he reaches to help her.

"Don't touch me."

"You've lost a lot of blood," he responds. "You can't keep fighting like this."

She stands, using him as a crutch for a moment as she gathers herself.

"Did you know..." she huffs, wrapping her reserve around her wounds. "That our arn... can help us... heal?" She takes a step away from him, seeming stronger for the moment.

He reaches out to grab her arm. He doesn't know what to say.

"What?" She asks, her voice drowned out immediately by another scream coming from outside. She grits her teeth and scowls, looking a bit stronger than she was a minute ago. Before Alyn knows it, he's watching her climb out the window into the midst of battle, and he watches from the sidelines for as long as he can before going down to help the injured.

~

The Night Guardian wakes up in a cold sweat, alone in her bed.

The room Alyn had given her in the herbalist's building is small but cozy, and off away from the bustle of the apprentices. The moonlight streaks in through the window, tainting everything in a pale light. She opens it and sneaks through, the majority of her wounds healed.

It isn't her night to guard the islands, but she walks to the portal anyway, her arn covering her body. The green light surrounds her, followed by water.

She swims to the beach, stepping out of the water and onto the shore. As her arn pulls away and collects on her back, her eyes catch on a body laying just before the trees. An ugly—a Night Guardian. Above him stands a figure with long, thin hair, a bandage holding her together like a doll spewing stuffing, blood saturating it.

Did you know... that our arn... can help us... heal?

"Kaeda," she says in an airy whisper.

She grins, her jagged teeth glistening with blood.

"You've made them angry..." she says, slowly getting into a crouch as her arn lifts up from behind her. A large hole near the tip verifies her identity.

"It's my turn to return the balance."

She's supposed to be dead.

"Good knowing you, kid."

Misha leaps.

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