AREKAI

“Master thyself before mastering thy horn.”

From the wind-torn peaks of Myrr’Kael, where cloud meets crag and silence is broken only by laughter or collision, descend the Arekai—horned folk of grit, grace, and the eternal spiral.
Part ram, part monk, part delinquent bard, they are a paradox made flesh: serene philosophers who throw punches mid-verse, spiritual warriors with prank war scars and temple bells in their ears.

To understand the Arekai is to walk the spiral—not in circles, but inward, then outward, until the path makes sense in hindsight.

All Arekai are born with horns curled inward—a physical echo of the self in its earliest form: doubting, guarded, untested. As the Arekai grows through hardship, solitude, and spiritual clarity, the horns begin to twist outward.

To the untrained eye, this is growth.
To the Arekai, it is revelation.

They say:

“The spiraled horn is a sign of one still caged in thought.
When thy horn faces out, so too doth thy spirit.”

And so begins the Path of Thyself—or as they jest in the lowlands: P.O.T.
At sixteen, each youth must wander for nine moons, horns wrapped and dulled, forbidden from using them in battle. The lesson?

“If thou canst not win without thy horns… thou art not ready to carry them.”

To clash is to communicate.

Arekai duel to determine social roles—not out of ego, but evolution. Each bout is one beat. Win, and thy station riseth. Lose, and thou gainest a lesson.

“A loss addeth a brick to thy foundation.
Keep building.”

Elders have been known to drop their rank willingly, seeking new insight from lower perspectives. For in the spiral, all returns in time.

Training begins at Solrise with four beats of discipline. The arena echoes with rhythm, sweat, and the bonk of the Woolsmack—a padded shepherd’s crook wielded by mentors to realign both form and focus.

Drills include:

Calisthenics

Horn-sparring (one beat, full contact, padded horns)

Rhythm combat to bardic drums

Stillness meditation among koi ponds

Between drills, jest flows like springwater.

“Your horn points forward. Stop lookin’ back.”
“The louder the laugh, the heavier the thoughts behind it.”
“You call it a fight—I call it family therapy.”

Every Arekai raises a koi.
To them, the koi is not just a pet—it is a reflection of self. Spiraled, then free. Calm, then chaotic. The state of one’s koi reveals the state of one’s soul.

Some cage their koi in tanks. Others build ponds.
The koi in the pond swims wide.
The koi in the tank paces endlessly.

And so arose the tradition that turns chaos divine...

On the 6th of Goldwane, at the 17th beat during Lunday, the horns sound.

Shatter-Tank begins.

For eight beats, Arekai with fully outward horns don padded wraps and raid any home where a koi is caged in glass. Tanks are shattered. Fish are scooped and sprinted to the nearest pond. Windows break. Pride breaks. But no one is hurt.

“TO THE POND, FISH WARRIOR!”

It is chaos, but sacred.

As one elder said:

“We all have tanks in our minds. Once a score... we break them open.”

Outward Arekai lead the charge.
Spiraled Arekai watch, reflect, or defend their tanks—some with protest, others with guilt.

There is a meditation older than horns, older than pond.

It is said that within every Arekai swim two koi.

The Spiraled Koi

“I am not enough.
I must prove.
I must hold tighter or all shall slip.”

It swims in circles, doubts, and pride. It is not evil—but trapped.

The Unraveled Koi

“I am not broken.
I am becoming.
My path is water, not stone.”

It swims free, strikes with grace, and trusts change.

In Arekai practice, the mind is a pond.
Still water reflects truth.
Muddied water distorts it.

Through meditation, the koi spiral together—no longer in opposition, but harmony.

“He who paddeth toward the spiral, spins alone.
He who floateth with both… arrives whole.”

They found him swaddled in burlap, left at the temple gate—a mule with no horns, no clan, and no clue.

But the Arekai took him in.

They tapped ceremonial horns to his head—not mockingly, but to say:

“Thou art kin.
Thou art Spiral.
Thy journey hath begun.”

His strikes were brute, his steps stiff, and when told to meditate, he often fell asleep with his hooves in the pond. But he listened. He trained. He stayed.

One day, the Mentor handed him a puzzle scroll:
Five letters. One word.

The mule wrote with only three.

“…There are five boxes, Mule Koi,” the Mentor said.

“Uh huh. And?” the mule replied, wide-eyed. The Mule did not comprehend.

The Mentor just laughed.

“You need more P.O.T., Mule Koi.”

And the whole Hurd fell over in laughter—horns shaking, soup spilled.

But the mule stayed. He learned the rhythm. He headbutted not to rise, but to understand. And when the Mentor asked if he’d stay and climb the ranks, he simply said:

“I was not made to fight upward.
I was born to walk forward.”

And so, he brewed something.

A muddy blend of wild honey, cocoa, cave mushrooms, and black desert coffee.

He called it:

"For courage… for calm… for the long road."

Wrapped in poncho patchwork stitched from old sparring mats and the horn spirals of those who found peace, he rode north—on a horse with no name.

“Wait,” said a student. “He’s a mule… and he rides a horse?”

The Mentor nodded, misty-eyed.

“Aye.
‘Tis weird.
Yet oddly beautiful.
The true nature of a mule.”

And somewhere, when the dojo grows quiet and the tea tastes extra earthy, the Mentor mutters:

“He’s still out there.
Sippin’, driftin’, vibin’… Mule Fuel in his veins.”

And P.O.T., of course.