Rimelion: The Exploiter

Lisa traveling somewhere far away…

The helicopter carved through the morning fog like a blade through silk.

It was a Kestrel-9, matte black with pulse-blue running lights that throbbed in time with the rotors—not the spinning kind, but the newer magnetic-displacement arrays that hummed at a frequency Lisa felt in her back teeth. The cabin smelled of new leather, and the windows were floor-to-ceiling smart-glass that shifted from opaque to crystal-clear depending on how dramatically she wanted to see the view.

Right now: very dramatically.

Mountains unfolded beneath her like a painting someone had forgotten to flatten. Jagged peaks wrapped in mist, pine forests so dense they looked like dark fur, and somewhere ahead, barely visible through the cloud break, a cluster of stone buildings perched on a plateau as if the mountain itself had grown them.

The monastery existed in isolation, which made Lisa’s holophone weep; she’d lost signal twenty minutes ago, and the silence from her feed felt like a missing limb. She didn’t pay for the satellite plan and she was regretting it now.

“Landing in ninety seconds, Miss Lisa,” the pilot said through the intercom.

She pressed her nose to the glass, breath fogging a small circle. “It’s so… empty,” she murmured. Trees. Rocks. More trees. A waterfall, maybe? Something white and vertical in the distance. “Do people actually live here?”

“Confirmed three heat signatures at the landing zone,” the pilot replied, because answering rhetorical questions was apparently in his contract.

The Kestrel banked, rotors shifting pitch, and the monastery rose to meet them. Up close, it was less romantic and more weathered; stone walls darkened by centuries of rain, wooden beams cracked and repaired and cracked again, a courtyard of swept gravel that looked like it had been raked by someone who considered pattern a spiritual practice.

Three figures stood at the edge of the courtyard, robes fluttering in the rotor wash. Two were monks in simple gray fabric; the third was Ian.

The Kestrel settled with a hiss of hydraulics and a final pulse of blue light. Lisa popped the cabin door before the ramp had fully extended and hopped down onto gravel that crunched under her designer boots.

“Ian!” she waved, bright as a flare in the mountain quiet.

His face split into a grin so wide and so grateful it almost hurt to look at. He jogged forward, bowing, actually bowing, before catching himself and just grabbing her hand instead. “Lisa, thank you, thank you so much for coming all the way out here. We can’t get deliveries normally, and Lola said you—”

“Of course!” She squeezed his hand, then peered past him at the helicopter’s cargo hold, already sliding open to reveal stacked crates. “I brought everything on the list. Food, medical supplies, some stuff Lola flagged, and—” she counted on her fingers “—four kinds of snacks, because I didn’t know what monks eat.”

Ian laughed and waved the two monks forward.

Together, the four of them started unloading. Lisa grabbed a crate and immediately regretted it, heavier than it looked, but stubbornness carried her the three meters to the pile before she set it down with a grunt that she hoped passed for casual.

She wiped her palms on her blazer and glanced at the monastery walls. Moss crept along the stone. Wind chimes hung from an eave, turning slowly.

“So,” she said, straightening. “This place. It belongs to…?”

“Mister Kai,” Ian said, hefting another crate with an ease that surprised her. “My master.”

Lisa blinked. She’d heard the name before; Charlie had mentioned it, something about swordwork, connections. “Your master? Like, actual master-master?”

Ian nodded, setting the crate down. “He trains swordsmanship. Traditional forms, meditation, discipline. He agreed to take Lunaris and me for a while. Let me tell you, getting pods here was a pain.” His voice softened, and his gaze drifted toward the monastery entrance. “We train our minds and our bodies here. It’s… different from Rimelion.”

Lisa’s brow furrowed. She tilted her head, studying him. “Bodies? But Luna…” She trailed off, the question sitting awkwardly between them. “How can she train her body?”

Ian only smiled.

It was a strange smile: knowing, warm, a little proud. He turned back to the cargo hold and reached for the last crate.

This one was different: matte black, sealed with magnetic clasps, and heavy enough that even Ian’s newly earned muscles strained under it. A small Rimebreak logo glowed faintly on the side.

“Come on,” he said. “She’ll want to see you.”

They passed through the monastery gate and into the interior. The hallways were stone and wood, spare and clean, smelling of incense and old timber. A handful of monks moved through the corridors in unhurried silence; one carrying a tea tray, another sweeping a corner that already looked spotless. They glanced at Lisa with polite curiosity and nothing more.

The sound reached her first.

Footsteps. Light, uneven, accompanied by a faint mechanical hum.

Lisa turned the corner and stopped.

Lunaris was walking toward them.

Walking.

Not in a wheelchair. Walking, one step at a time, down the stone corridor, her face tight with concentration and bright with something that looked like defiance. A thin framework of dark metal traced the outside of her legs and hips; articulated joints, slender struts, a lattice of engineering that moved with her like a second skeleton.

Lisa’s breath caught.

For one full second, the world was just that image: Lunaris, upright, in motion, the mountain light falling across her face through a narrow window.

Then Lisa’s body decided her brain was still processing.

“LUNYYYY!”

She launched forward like a missile with feelings. Lunaris had exactly enough time to register the incoming threat before Lisa crashed into her, arms wrapping around her in a hug so fierce it lifted the smaller girl half off her exoskeleton’s footing. The metal frame whirred in protest, servos recalibrating.

“You’re WALKING!” Lisa’s voice cracked somewhere between a shriek and a sob. “You’re—Luna—you’re—”

Lunaris laughed, the sound startled. “Big sis! Big sis, be careful, I’ll fall—”

“I don’t care!” Lisa squeezed harder, burying her face in Lunaris’s shoulder. “You’re walking, you’re walking, you’re walking—”

“I’m walking!” Lunaris echoed, and now she was crying too, grinning through it, her arms coming up to clutch Lisa’s back. “I’m walking!”

Their voices bounced off the stone walls, too loud for a monastery, too joyful to contain. Somewhere behind them, a monk paused mid-sweep and decided the floor could wait.

Ian stood back with the black crate in his arms, watching them, his expression so soft it barely belonged on a face that usually looked like a startled puppy.

When they finally pulled apart, Lisa still gripping Lunaris’s shoulders, eyes red, mascara staging a minor rebellion, Lisa looked down at the framework. Up close, it was elegant in a rough way: dark alloy struts with visible wiring, joints that clicked softly with each micro-adjustment, a small power unit strapped to Lunaris’s lower back.

“Exoskeleton,” Lunaris said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Version 1.0. It does most of the work—like ninety-nine percent. My legs just… suggest directions.” She flexed one knee; the frame responded a beat later, smooth but clearly leading the motion. “The therapy Charlie arranged, it’s reconnecting things. Slowly. But enough that the exo can read my intent and move with me.”

Lisa sniffled, then grinned. “Charlie gave you legs.”

“Charlie gave me a chance,” Lunaris corrected, but she was smiling so hard her cheeks had to ache.

Ian cleared his throat. He shifted the black crate forward, the Rimebreak logo catching the corridor light. “And this,” he said, “is the next step.”

Lunaris’s eyes locked onto the crate. Her mouth fell open. “Is that—”

“2.0,” Ian confirmed.

The sound Lunaris made was not entirely human. It was closer to the noise a cat makes when presented with an entire fish: a squeak compressed into a gasp compressed into a vibration of pure wanting.

She grabbed Ian’s sleeve and dragged him with a strength that the exoskeleton definitely assisted, but her enthusiasm absolutely powered. “Come on come on come on—”

“Luna, I’m carrying—”

“Faster!”

They vanished around the corner, Lunaris’s uneven footsteps and mechanical humming fading into excited chatter that echoed off the monastery stone.

Lisa stood alone in the corridor.

The quiet resettled around her like water filling a space where a stone had been thrown. Wind chimes sang distantly. Incense curled from somewhere unseen. A monk glided past, nodded once, and disappeared.

She glanced around.

Lisa stood alone in the corridor for approximately eleven seconds before the silence became personally offensive.

She wasn’t built for quiet. Quiet was what happened when the music stopped, and when the music stopped, something had gone wrong. She bounced on her heels, glanced left, glanced right, and decided that exploring a mountain monastery was basically a side quest, and side quests were how you found the good loot.

The hallways were a maze of stone and wood, every surface worn smooth by centuries of feet and patience. Doorways opened into spare rooms, a meditation chamber with cushions arranged in a circle, a library where scrolls sat in wooden cubbies like sleeping birds, a courtyard garden where a single tree grew from a crack in the flagstone.

She peeked into each one with the curiosity of someone who’d never met a door she didn’t want to open.

Then she found it.

The room was tucked at the end of a corridor that smelled of sandalwood and something floral she couldn’t name. Wooden screens carved with mountain scenes divided the space into intimate sections, and red silk drapes, actual silk, she could tell from the way light moved through them, hung from the low ceiling. A low table sat at the center, dark lacquered wood polished to a mirror finish, surrounded by cushioned mats embroidered with cranes in flight.

It looked like someone had transplanted a piece of ancient China into the middle of a mountain and dared anyone to question it.

A man knelt behind the table, hands folded in his lap, as though he had been waiting for her specifically, or for anyone, or for the concept of a guest in general. His robes were traditional and his posture carried the stillness that made Lisa feel like she’d been fidgeting her entire life.

Which, to be fair, she had.

“Ah,” he said, and the syllable carried enough warmth to fill the room. “A visitor. Like a bird blown to an unfamiliar branch—unexpected, yet welcome.” He gestured to the mat across from him. “Please sit. The tea is fresh.”

Lisa hesitated at the threshold, one designer boot hovering over the wooden floor. “Um. Hi? I’m Lisa. I brought the supplies. With the helicopter.”

“Yes,” Mister Kai said, already pouring. The liquid was pale gold, steam curling from it in lazy spirals. “The mountain heard your arrival. It was... not subtle.”

She couldn’t tell if that was a joke. His expression gave nothing away, serene, patient, the face that probably looked exactly the same during an earthquake.

She stepped inside, kicked off her boots at the threshold because it felt like the room demanded it, and lowered herself onto the mat. The cushion was surprisingly comfortable. The teacup was small enough to fit in her palm, warm porcelain with no handle, and the scent that rose from it was jasmine mingled with something herbal and green.

She sipped.

It was... fantastic. Like, suspiciously good. “Okay,” she said, lowering the cup. “That’s amazing.”

Kai’s smile deepened by perhaps a millimeter. “Tea, like truth, reveals itself slowly. The first sip is acquaintance. The second, understanding. The third...” He paused, lifting his own cup. “The third is honesty.”

Lisa took a second sip. Still amazing. “And the fourth?”

“Refill,” he said simply.

She laughed. Kai poured again without being asked; the motion so fluid it looked rehearsed by generations.

“So,” he said, setting the pot down with a soft click. “Ian tells me you are a warrior in Rimelion. A fire mage of considerable reputation. Like the phoenix, you burn—but what do you burn for?”

Lisa blinked. Nobody had ever asked her that before. People asked what level she was, what skills she had, whether she could solo a dungeon.

Nobody asked why.

She wrapped both hands around the cup; the warmth seeping into her fingers. “I’m just... someone trying to survive, honestly.” She shrugged, the motion smaller than her usual theatrics. “I mean, I’m strong—really strong, actually—but it’s not like I planned it. Rimelion just kind of... happened to me.”

Kai tilted his head, waiting.

“I have this class,” she continued, staring into the pale gold surface of her tea. “The Rebel Fire. It’s mythic. It doesn’t obey rules—it just... burns the way it wants to. And I guess that’s kind of me? I never followed the meta, never min-maxed, never joined the big guilds. I just fought the way that felt right, and somehow it worked.”

She took another sip. “Charlie helped. A lot. She saw something in me before I saw it in myself. Helped me get my class evolution, pushed me toward not-a-dragon I would’ve run from. She’s...” Lisa trailed off, searching for the word. “She’s the person who makes you believe you’re better than you think you are.”

Kai nodded slowly, as though her words had confirmed something he already suspected. “A flame that burns brightest is not the one with the most fuel, but the one with the clearest purpose. You burn for others, Miss Lisa. That is rare, and like a lantern in the dark, it draws those who are lost.”

Lisa felt heat rise in her cheeks that had nothing to do with the tea. “I just... don’t enjoy seeing my friends get hurt.”

“And yet you carry a fire that could level cities,” Kai observed mildly.

“Well, yeah,” she said, as though that were obvious. “But only the bad ones.”

Something shifted in Kai’s expression, not quite a laugh, but the recognition that a laugh was deserved. He lifted his cup. “Then let us drink to selective destruction.”

Lisa grinned and clinked her tiny cup against his. The porcelain sang.

She talked more than she had expected. Regarding the wall defense, she held the line until her reserves were depleted. About Katherine’s ridiculous bravery. About Lunaris charging Brian alone, and the hollow feeling of someone you cared about making a beautiful, terrible mistake.

“The hardest fire to master,” he said eventually, refilling her cup for what might have been the fifth time, “is not the one in your hands. It is the one in your chest, the flame of caring so deeply that you would burn yourself to warm another. Like the candle that fears the wind, you must learn not to flicker when the storm comes, but to burn steadier.”

Lisa opened her mouth, closed it, and took another sip instead.

The tea was still amazing.